Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference 0871545837, 9780871545831

Table of contents :
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Part I: Introduction
1. Pursuing Equal Education in Societies of Differences
Part II: Schooling and the Equality-Difference Paradox
2. We're All for Equality in U.S. School Reforms: But What Does it Mean?
3. Identity Matters: Ethnicity, Race, and the American Dream
Part III: Just Schools in Context
4. Contested Terrain: Visions of Multiculturalism in an American Town
5. Universal Particularism: Making an Ethical Islamic School in Chicago
6. The Reach and Limits of Cultural Accommodation: Public Schools and Somali Muslim Immigrants in Maine
7. Republican Ironies: Equality and Identities in French Schools
8. Diversity, Transformative Citizenship Education, and School Reform
9. After Just Schools: The Equality-Difference Paradox and Conflicting Varieties of Liberal Hope
Index

Citation preview

Just Schools

Just Schools Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference

MARTHA MINOW, RICHARD A. SHWEDER, AND HAZEL ROSE MARKUS EDITORS

Russell Sage Foundation New York, New York

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Just schools : pursuing equality in societies of difference / Martha Minow, Richard A. Shweder, Hazel Markus, editors. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-87154-583-1 1. Educational equalization—United States. 2. Multiculturalism—United States. 3. Educational equalization. 4. Multiculturalism. I. Minow, Martha, 1954– II. Shweder, Richard A. III. Markus, Hazel. LC213.2.J87 2008 379.260973—dc22 2007044176 Copyright © 2008 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. Text design by Suzanne Nichols. RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 112 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10021 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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The Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation, one of the oldest of America’s general purpose foundations, was established in 1907 by Mrs. Margaret Olivia Sage for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” The Foundation seeks to fulfill this mandate by fostering the development and dissemination of knowledge about the country’s political, social, and economic problems. While the Foundation endeavors to assure the accuracy and objectivity of each book it publishes, the conclusions and interpretations in Russell Sage Foundation publications are those of the authors and not of the Foundation, its Trustees, or its staff. Publication by Russell Sage, therefore, does not imply Foundation endorsement. BOARD OF TRUSTEES Thomas D. Cook, Chair Kenneth D. Brody W. Bowman Cutter, III Christopher Edley Jr. John A. Ferejohn Larry V. Hedges

Kathleen Hall Jamieson Melvin J. Konner Alan B. Krueger Cora B. Marrett

Nancy Rosenblum Richard H. Thaler Eric Wanner Mary C. Waters

Social Science Research Council The Social Science Research Council is an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that seeks to improve the quality of publicly available knowledge around the world. Broadly international in composition, it works to advance social science research and education, to enhance communication among scholars and to bring useful social knowledge to public attention. The SSRC builds bridges—among academic disciplines and between scholarly researchers and foundations, governments, and the public. This book is the outgrowth of activities within the Council’s Migration Program Area. LAW AND CULTURE WORKING GROUP John Bowen David Chambers Jane Maslow Cohen Alison Dundes-Renteln Arthur Eisenberg Karen Engle

Katherine Ewing Maivân Clech Lâm Hazel Markus Usha Menon Lloyd Rudolph Susanne Rudolph

Lawrence Sager Austin Sarat Claude Steele Nomi Stolzenberg Marcello Suarez-Orozco Unni Wikan

Working Group Co-Chairs: Richard A. Shweder, Martha Minow, Hazel Markus SSRC Program Director: Josh DeWind

Contents

About the Authors

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Acknowledgments

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PART I Chapter

PART II Chapter

Chapter

PART III Chapter

Chapter

INTRODUCTION 1 PURSUING EQUAL EDUCATION IN SOCIETIES OF DIFFERENCE Martha Minow, Richard A. Shweder, and Hazel Rose Markus

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SCHOOLING AND THE EQUALITY-DIFFERENCE PARADOX 2 WE’RE ALL FOR EQUALITY IN U.S. SCHOOL REFORMS: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Martha Minow

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3 IDENTITY MATTERS: ETHNICITY, RACE, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM Hazel Rose Markus

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JUST SCHOOLS IN CONTEXT 4 CONTESTED TERRAIN: VISIONS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN AN AMERICAN TOWN Austin Sarat 5 UNIVERSAL PARTICULARISM: MAKING AN ETHICAL ISLAMIC SCHOOL IN CHICAGO Barnaby B. Riedel

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CONTENTS

Chapter

Chapter

PART IV Chapter

Chapter

6 THE REACH AND LIMITS OF CULTURAL ACCOMMODATION: PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SOMALI MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS IN MAINE Heather L. Lindkvist 7 REPUBLICAN IRONIES: EQUALITY AND IDENTITIES IN FRENCH SCHOOLS John R. Bowen

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JUST SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD 8 DIVERSITY, TRANSFORMATIVE CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION, AND SCHOOL REFORM James A. Banks 9 AFTER JUST SCHOOLS: THE EQUALITYDIFFERENCE PARADOX AND CONFLICTING VARIETIES OF LIBERAL HOPE Richard A. Shweder Index

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About the Authors

MARTHA MINOW is the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor at Harvard Law School. RICHARD A. SHWEDER is the William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is a sociocultural psychologist and the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. 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. JOHN R. BOWEN is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. HEATHER L. LINDKVIST is a doctoral candidate (ABD) in comparative human development at the University of Chicago and lecturer in anthropology at Bates College. BARNABY B. RIEDEL is a researcher on the Islamic Adaptations Project and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. AUSTIN SARAT is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor, and Senior Advisor to the Dean of the Faculty at Amherst College.

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Acknowledgments

This project is an ethnographic, legal, and conceptual exploration of the tensions between the vicissitudes of the pluralism agenda (seeking recognition and respect of diverse group traditions) and the inclusion agenda (seeking equal opportunity and mainstream status for members of all groups) in America’s schools. The project would not have been possible without the vision and support of the Russell Sage Foundation, its inspirational president Eric Wanner, its “Culture Contact Program,” and its program officers Stephanie Platz (who helped us first imagine this collection of essays) and Jitka Maleckova (who brilliantly and substantially guided our meetings and writings on the topic almost from the beginning). We also wish to thank Suzanne Nichols, director of publications at the Russell Sage Foundation, for the care and efficiency with which this book has been reviewed and produced, and two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, whose detailed summaries and critiques were both insightful and helpful. Those of us in the social sciences are grateful that the Russell Sage Foundation has become one of America’s leading centers for research on diversity, equality, and the lives of both immigrant and nonimmigrant minority groups in the United States. The project also would have not been possible without the support of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the members of the SSRC Working Group on “Law and Culture” (initially called the Working Group on “Ethnic Customs, Assimilation and American Law”), whose members are listed in the front matter of this volume. The editors and authors owe large collegial debts to Frank Kessel, the program officer of the group at the time of its formation and its animating spirit for several years; Craig Calhoun, President of SSRC; Kevin Moore, the program officer of the group at the time the “Just Schools” project was first conceived; and Josh DeWind, the current program officer of the group and the wise intelligence behind all our efforts in recent years. We express our thanks to Elissa Klein and Wonny Lervisit (at SSRC), Kristin Flower (at Harvard Law School), and Michele Wittels (at the

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

University of Chicago) for their assistance over the years in the organization of meetings and the preparation of the manuscript, as well as to Jonathan Burton-Macleod and Taki Flevaris (at Harvard Law School), who helped with the editing of parts of the final draft. This volume developed in part while Richard A. Shweder was a Carnegie Scholar. Special thanks and appreciation to Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Patricia L. Rosenfield, Program Officer at the Carnegie Scholars Program, for their support. This is the third publication of the Working Group on “Law and Culture.” In the year 2000, the Working Group published a special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (volume 129, number 4), entitled “The End of Tolerance.” In 2002, the group published a book entitled Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies (edited by Richard A. Shweder, Martha Minow, and Hazel Markus). We three editors are grateful to all who have supported these efforts. —M.M., R.A.S., and H.M.

Part I INTRODUCTION

1 PURSUING EQUAL EDUCATION IN SOCIETIES OF DIFFERENCE Martha Minow, Richard A. Shweder, and Hazel Rose Markus

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chooling is always an act of hope. An older generation hopes to pass on its learning to those who follow, a free society hopes to engage a new generation in the project of self-governance, and an unequal society hopes to offer genuine opportunities for individual economic mobility and success. Adults hope schools will help students become economically selfsufficient, capable of supporting their own dependents, and able to enhance the nation’s economic competitiveness over time. Equally important, older generations hope to pass on their stores of knowledge and values as a cultural inheritance, which may include a specific national, cultural, or religious identity. Students hope for friends, fun, and success—though they may not always agree among themselves or with adults about how to measure it. In the United States, people place these hopes in public schools, which receive financial support from tax dollars, and private schools, which are assisted by public tax exemptions and tax-deductible private donations. With these public resources and local, state, and federal supervision, schooling becomes more than a repository of hopes; it is also a project of justice, inspiring disagreements about what just schooling entails. After all, they are only schools; they cannot solve all the inequities in society. Just Schools thus considers the problem of justice in a multicultural society and, at the same time, the relatively limited means schools have for addressing such problems through policies and practices. This book explores “just schools” both as an inquiry into debates over justice and an examination of the specific issues of equality, freedom, and fairness during a period of intense school reform and demographic transformation. Largely focused on the United States, but with some attention to other countries, Just Schools explores contrasting and, at times, conflicting hopes for schooling as well as related disagreements among parents, teachers, and students. Central to our inquiry is the tension between promoting individual

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development and opportunity for all children—regardless of race, culture, religion, immigration status, or class—and enabling social groups to pass on their traditions. At times, this tension appears as a choice between treating each student the same or instead recognizing students’ cultural, religious, linguistic, and racial backgrounds. At other times, the tension arises between commitments to desegregation and integration versus separate instruction for students grouped by religion, language background, culture, or race. The status of group membership in efforts to achieve equality is especially fraught in American law and politics. Simultaneous commitments to treat individuals as individuals and to rectify ongoing group disparities animate elections and constitutional disputes. In a recent hotly debated decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for four of the nine justices, overturned voluntary racial desegregation plans that were enacted by elected school boards in Seattle and Louisville to promote integration and educational opportunity. Rejecting “racial balancing” as an insufficiently compelling reason, and restricting the use of race-based classifications in assigning students to schools in almost all circumstances, Chief Justice Roberts repeated a line the Court has used before: “‘[A]t the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class.’”1 Yet in vigorous dissents, Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer emphasized that the Constitution’s commitment to rectify racial disparities in schooling—with explicit use of racial classifications when necessary—was the vital meaning of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).2 With Justice Kennedy joining those who rejected the plans, the result of this case sharply restricted official use of racially-based school assignments to overcome neighborhood racial imbalances. This is true even though white parents with choices pick schools in wealthier and whiter communities than the schools where families without resources live. American schools today are racially separate (Orfield and Lee 2004),3 and there are racial disparities in student achievement, resources, and access to opportunities (Casserly 2003). Because this nation still struggles with the legacies and enduring realities of racial segregation in schooling, any homogeneous student population raises concerns about coerced separation, unequal opportunities, and failures to forge commonalities through daily contact. Yet no less troubling is the suggestion that a predominantly African American school is inherently inferior to an integrated school.4 Excellence must be possible for any group of students. Homogeneity in the student body must be distinguished from forced or unchosen segregation along a characteristic like race or ethnicity. Finally, the possibilities for passing on group traditions and pride are large and real in “majority-minority” schools; they are well demonstrated by excellent historically black colleges.

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Outside the public school system, private schools that are organized around students’ religious and cultural identities are actually constitutionally protected. In 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to eliminate Catholic schools and “Americanize” immigrants. It struck down a statute requiring attendance at a common public school and ensured parents the power to select a private school to inculcate a religious identity or other “additional obligations” in their children (Pierce v. Society of Sisters 1925). That decision affirmed and spurred the development of parochial and other private schools as alternatives to the public “common school.” Hence, the United States has long permitted groups organized around religion, culture, or language—as well as military training, the arts, and other specialties—to run their own private schools. Since this decision, American schooling has grown more plural, with increasing opportunities for schools organized around group identities in public as well as private contexts. For example, public funding made available to entrepreneurial groups now underwrites charter schools; specialized public programs designed to draw students from across entire districts are organized around themes or programs and operate as magnet and pilot schools; and publicly-funded vouchers as well as public and private scholarships expand access to private schools. New schools can specialize in particular values and identities, or attempt new ways to recruit and integrate diverse students. They are limited only by competition and increasingly transparent measures of student achievement. Hence this time of school reform is a propitious moment to consider how American schools do, and should, treat student differences and social multiculturalism. What do and what should new private schools, new experiments in public schooling, and demographic shifts within public schools mean for the cultural, racial, and religious identities of students in a diverse and at times fractious nation? What concerns about equality and identity arise in this period in which rising immigration complicates racial categories beyond the categories of black and white, religious and language differences become prominent, and student opportunities and achievements continue to correlate with race and socioeconomic status? Based on close observations of individual schools, assessments of social-psychological and educational research, and historical and legal analyses, this book offers vivid demonstrations of local, national, and international disagreements about whether equality in education requires distinctive groups to have access to the same instruction, similar achievement results, or recognition and resources.

The Equality-Difference Paradox The challenge of promoting just schooling in a diverse society presents us with what can be called the equality-difference paradox: a tension between,

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on the one side, social and political efforts to advance equality for all regardless of culture, religion, race, or class, and, on the other side, government support for pluralism and multiculturalism. Do schools promote integration along the lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and economic class, or instead do they divide students along these or other lines? Do schools with diverse student bodies encourage the development of one common identity, or instead do they foster distinctive group identities. And which of these avenues better expands opportunities for or confers respect on the individuals involved? It may seem contradictory to advance the same chances and results for students while assisting different groups to develop and maintain diverse beliefs, values, family practices, and control of schools. Yet for “equal opportunity” to thrive, we may have to ensure each individual the very chance to attend very different schools. Similarly, inculcating national values and universalistic norms, such as respect for all persons, may seem at odds with commitments to respect different racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds. Yet through these overarching ideas, and out of respect for all persons, distinct traditions and groups may thrive. These twists reflect the recognition that academic and career achievement is only one dimension of personal meaning and satisfaction. Affiliation with a religious, cultural, linguistic, or racial group can be an equally, or even more important, dimension, and a free society is committed to enabling precisely such affiliations. Ironically, while inclusive democracies may work by inviting their members to forget their different heritages, the result sometimes leaves individuals lonely and comforted by only a thin sense of identity and belonging (Caughey 1986).5 In these cases the democracy itself may permit or even encourage people to nourish and enrich distinctive communities bound by thicker ties. As an unintended consequence, social and economic inequality, misunderstanding, prejudice, and political factions may increase. So equality and difference may be phases of social cycles; they may also signal contrasting choices of emphasis in school programs and policies. Tensions between equality and difference actually appear repeatedly both in the work of scholars and in the voices of parents, teachers, students, administrators, and policy makers who are struggling to make schools work. The meanings of equality and difference certainly shift over time, as do attitudes about race, ethnicity, and conflict over identities (Peshkin 1991). Even with shifting understandings, people experience and argue about what seem to be competing tugs variously named uniformity versus difference, individual opportunity versus group rights, inclusion versus multiculturalism, assimilation versus factions, commonality versus distinctiveness, and equality versus difference. For example, in longstanding and ongoing legal and policy maneuvers, some people push for greater commonality while others pursue opportunities for expression and preservation of group identities through schooling. Since

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2001, the federal No Child Left Behind Act6 and related policies press for commonality at the state level by calling for statewide metrics of achievement and regular waves of student testing. These policies generate a level of standardization and commonality across each state and across the country that is unprecedented in the United States, given its strong tradition of local control of schooling. Although still far from the degree of national control over educational governance in a country like France, American schools now operate under curricular rubrics and assessment tools that press for shared, high expectations for student academic performance, with special attention to reducing racial and ethnic disparities. Nonetheless, variety and difference persist in American schools. Even the national legislation is predicated upon state and local control of schools. It does not touch the distinctive missions of parochial and independent schools, nor the mounting experiments with charter and public magnet schools. Variety exists not only between schools but within them, as individual schools employ distinctive academic tracks and permit varying degrees of discretion to individual teachers regarding content and pedagogy. Individual teachers and schools pursue diverse views about how to improve schooling and reveal an American penchant for experimentation, competition, and product differentiation. Given the legacies of racial and ethnic segregation, the explosion of immigrant children (Fix and Capps 2005),7 and the steady growth of both religious schools and specialized public schools organized around bilingual instruction, students’ identities are salient. They are often the focus of school curricula, activities, dress-code regulations, and reform efforts. Some schools, and some groups within some schools, make the appreciation of distinctive cultures an end in itself. They promote appreciation of different groups, challenge group-based bias, and develop positive contact and collaborations among students from different groups (Banks, chapter 8, this volume; Sarat, chapter 4, this volume). Others stress cultural sensitivity as a means for boosting student learning and achievement (Banks, chapter 8, this volume; Sarat, chapter 4, this volume). Critics of the focus on individual equality worry that individuals and groups lose something important when schools stress assimilation to a single set of cultural practices and norms. Critics of cultural sensitivity and some versions of multiculturalism fear that accommodation of group differences jeopardizes social cohesion, national identity, and individual chances for selfinvention. One important crosscutting question is whether these worries and risks are genuine and severe or are instead products of symbolic and ideological fights. Some students and families think they face a choice between either pursuing academic achievement or preserving cultural difference. Pursuing academic success triggers for some the derogative label of “acting white” (Fryer and Austen-Smith 2005). Others, such as the Wisconsin Amish, op-

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pose mandatory attendance at diverse public high schools as interference with passing on their way of life (Wisonsin v. Yoder 1972). Some of the research examined in this book indicates that there is no inevitable and necessary trade-off between promoting academic success and recognizing cultural differences. Indeed recognition and accommodation of cultural differences may be crucial to engaging some students, generating the kind of partnership with parents that enhances academic success, and creating classrooms that feel safe and “owned” by all students (Markus, chapter 3, this volume; Banks, chapter 8, this volume). Research indicates that when teachers attend to the different identities and learning styles of students inflected by their families and cultural experiences, the disparities in achievement that divides racial groups diminish notably (Markus, chapter 3, this volume; Banks, chapter 8, this volume). Failure to create a coherent and positive school culture is associated with low-performing schools, but neglecting the values and priorities that children learn at home may doom schools’ chances for student success or jeopardize the partnership between parents and teachers that contributes so dramatically to effective education (Morrison, Rimm-Kauffman, and Pianta 2003; Barnard 2004). Likewise, national competitiveness increasingly requires adults who work well in teams. Schools can promote mutual respect and teamwork both by demystifying and celebrating the students’ diverse traditions, and by submerging individual identities under a school team or other joint project (National Competitiveness Council 1998; Grutter v. Bollinger 2003; Gratz v. Bollinger 2003). Hence, schools can boost students’ competencies through special responsiveness to their cultural backgrounds and group identities. That responsiveness can take place either within a single diverse school or through separate schools organized around distinctive cultural, linguistic, or religious identities. A different kind of multicultural appreciation arises not within individual schools but instead across the school system as a whole. When the collection of schools available to individual students in a given city or state includes Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, Afrocentric, Arabic-language, and other distinctive private and, in some cases, public schools, the message to parents and to society is some degree of acceptance and appreciation of multiple educational settings. By allowing each of the options to satisfy the state’s requirement of compulsory schooling, the government endorses pluralism—even as it sets standardizing conditions for curricula and minimum qualifications for teachers (Minow 2001). Members of some cultural communities prefer acknowledgment of difference or even separation in fulfilling the ideal of equality. In these cases, equality equates respect and recognition (Taylor 1992; Kymlicka 1996; Honneth 1996). Others worry that identifying and separating people by group membership, whether through government action or government permission

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for private choices that result in separation, endangers equality, full inclusion, and equal access to resources (Fraser and Honneth 2003). And the risk of racially-based disparities in opportunities persists and grows as the ideal of desegregation shrinks in law and in practice (Dillon 2007). Complicating matters, acknowledgment of differences is indispensable to redistributing resources from advantaged to disadvantaged groups, and racial and religious differences tend to track the distribution of advantages. Indeed, maintaining attention to racial categories is indispensable to the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires states to collect testing data sorted by race. Even as he joined four other justices in rejecting voluntary racial segregation plans because of their use of racial classifications, Justice Anthony Kennedy made clear that public schools can continue to track “enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race,” and may pursue the goal of bringing students of diverse backgrounds and races together through “strategic site selection of new schools, drawing attendance zones within general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1. 2007, 8). In the midst of local and national fights over schools, what each child deserves should not get lost. Yet, a formulation that focuses on each distinct child implicitly embraces the liberal individual, apart from family and larger group, as the unit of analysis. That, to some, is the biggest point of contention. Some people view the identity of the family or group to be equally or more important than the progress of the unique individual. Some stress that the individual cannot be known or supported without respecting the group affiliation. How much should or does a focus on each child call for lifting the child out of the family and facilitating separation from home, religion, ethnicity? How much should attending to what each child deserves involve recognizing, accommodating, and extending his or her home traditions or designing education that is continuous with the home environment?8 Whether the challenges of diversity are inherent in the nature of cultural identity or are instead produced by particular political or ideological arrangements (Appiah 2007; Sen 2007), a multicultural society risks clashes between groups and even more profound disagreements over the norms it uses to recognize and manage its multiculturalism. Nowhere are these conflicts more pronounced than in the design and operation of schools, where the tasks of cultural reproduction make the stakes vivid and large (Sleeter 2001).9 Schools in the United States were central places for debates over the meanings of equality even before the rise of public education. They have also been the sites of periodically intense fights over the treatment of students’ differences (Rudolph 1965; Kaestle 1983). The creation of the “common school” animated nineteenth century reformers. During the surge of immigration at the turn of the twentieth century, reformers tried to confine the

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moral, legal, and social space for individuals and groups to practice or change their distinctive ways of life. By the 1980s, multiculturalism in the sense of verbal acknowledgment of racial, cultural, and linguistic identities swept the schools; and by 2000, religious diversity also acquired new acknowledgment in public as well as private school settings. In other countries, waves of immigrants and refugees entering and crossing Europe since the 1980s have presented questions about the space for difference in schools that had little prior experience with such issues. Similarly, as immigration and settlement practices had changed in the United States by the turn of the twenty-first century, schools in Michigan, Maine, Illinois, and Kansas confronted new conflicts over dress codes, prayer rooms, and other potential accommodations for Muslim students. So as this new century unfolds, how schools treat students provokes debates in the suburbs of Paris, the neighborhoods of Amstersdam, the communities of Chicago, and the schools of Lewiston, Maine. These debates focus on the questions of uniformity versus difference, individual opportunity versus group rights, inclusion versus multiculturalism, assimilation versus factions, commonality versus distinctiveness, and equality versus difference. Curiously, each side of these abstract tensions appeals to at least some conception of equality and justice. Uniformity indicates a civic republican model of shared citizenship in a single polity through which each individual receives equal membership and regard (primarily as a citizen of the nation), while recognizing difference matches equal regard in a different way. Individual opportunity signals equal starting points and chances for success, while group rights accord equal acknowledgment to distinctive and meaningful features of identities and practices of subcommunities. Appeals to justice and equality permeate disagreements about what these ideals mean for schools. Justice in schools pertains both to opportunities for academic success and social mobility as well as to the treatment of individual students while in school. Equal justice calls for equal distribution of opportunities and equal respect. But it remains entirely contested whether this justice is for parents or groups of adults who wish to pass on their traditions, or instead entirely to each child as a distinct individual. Further, if this justice is geared toward children, to what extent should their own preferences or some picture of their long-term interests guide the shaping of their group memberships? Then, should public officials, parents, religious leaders, or neighbors determine how much students should adhere to or be drawn out of the identities that they find at home? At heart, then, the tension between equality and difference exposes disagreements over whether just schooling involves equal access to a single pathway of academic, economic, and social success, or instead equal respect and support for multiple pathways to success, grounded in distinct cultural

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and communal traditions and aspirations, and even different perspectives on the individual’s relationship to groups, the nation, and the world. The stakes are high for the nation as a whole. Cultural reproduction for the entire nation is an inevitable dimension of education. National identities are implicated not only in the balance between individual and subgroup identities, but also in efforts to inculcate a sense of national heritage, patriotism, and identity. The national identity itself can embrace some version of multiculturalism, or it can instead seek to suppress or even strip away distinctive group identities. Subgroup identities can in turn offer pathways to the national identity, or they can instead operate as rivals. A private Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim school may inculcate a sense of American patriotism; such schools may foster a religious identity as part of that American pride or as a distinct and even overarching identity. Besides a national political identity, schools may draw students into cultural practices influenced by popular culture or particular socioeconomic pockets. New immigrants may assimilate to the America they find. But depending on where they live and the quality of schools available to their children, this may involve lowering rather than raising their educational aspirations, their respect for government, or their hopes for joining the mainstream (Rumbaut and Portes 2001). And young people, ever inventive, energetic, and distinctive, may invent their own hybrid identities or methods for navigating the worlds fashioned by adults, introducing differences quite apart from the group identities familiar to their teachers and parents.

Even More Complex in Practice Individual chapters of this book show how the equality-difference paradoxes unfold in practice, often with more complexities and nuance than might be imagined in the abstract. Any given individual can be seen through the lenses of race, religion, or nationality. Heather Lindkvist documents how Somali immigrants are seen by longstanding Americans in first racial and then religious terms. She then shows how the immigrants themselves use the multiple frames in negotiating their treatment (Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume). Multiculturalism may be controversial in general, or in some places where parents say “we’re all multiculturalists now,” the divisions may arise over precisely what accommodations it entails for schools (Sarat, chapter 4, this volume; Glazer 1998). Students have choices and show inventiveness in shaping their own identities and responses to schools, yet classrooms and teachers also subtly affect how safe and welcome individual students from different backgrounds feel to articulate those feelings (Banks, chapter 8, this volume; Markus, chapter 3, this volume). Equality and diversity point in the same direction at times as well. For ex-

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ample, a private religious school aspires to prepare students for active participation in the democratic process (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993), and a private Islamic school in Chicago seeks to cultivate universal ethical values (Riedel, chapter 5, this volume). The tension between equality and difference resembles the contrast between republican and liberal values, much discussed in contemporary political theory. Republican values stress formation of a national civic identity, shared by all and ensuring equality to all, while demanding individuals to strip themselves of particular cultural or religious markers. This is a position exemplified by schooling in France, or so Americans imagine; a more complex understanding is explored in chapter 7 of this volume (Bowen). In the first chapter, Martha Minow provides an analysis of legal and political debates over schooling since the famous antisegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education. She suggests that models of equality have alternated in the United States between redistribution and recognition along lines of difference. Redistribution signals struggles over allocating economic and other resources to produce equal starting points (or equal results) for students regardless of group membership. Recognition is the focal point of struggles over public respect and accommodation for the experiences, privations, goals of particular groups. Since Brown, these debates have expanded beyond race to the categories of gender, language, disability, and religion. Meanwhile, the emergence of charter schools, magnet schools, and vouchers for private schools permits the development of more identity-based schools. Because having a coherent mission and committed teachers and parents may be more important than a national formula for student success, fights over the treatment of differences have more to do with national identity than with progress in student achievement. Students can learn, perform well on standardized tests, and even develop a sense of patriotism in parochial schools or other schools with specialized missions. Yet an increase from the current 11 percent enrollment in private schools (National Center for Education Statistics 2006) or other specialized schools would affect the polity and thus presents a question more about national character than one about improving individual students’ prospects. Hazel Markus explores how ethnicity and race matter as students develop identities and work to find their place in schools. Identifying two types of differences among students, chapter 3 distinguishes between culturally derived differences and historically imposed status differences (often called racial differences) that require attention if students are to identify with school. Giving rich depictions of the significance of these kinds of differences in light of models of the self, the chapter examines what it means for a school to be “identity safe” for students marked by different kinds of differences. It includes concrete directions for schools committed to ensuring each student a path toward success.

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In chapter 4, Austin Sarat presents an ethnographic account of views of multiculturalism in the very liberal and largely middle class community of Amherst, Massachusetts. In this chapter, models of equality alternate. First, there are those who seek “soft multiculturalism,”—meaning some cultural accommodation for student differences, but not if it interferes with what kids are uniformly expected to know and demonstrate, if it means undermining authority of teachers, or if it reduces expectations of achievement. Alternatively, there are those who advocate “hard multiculturalism,” believing that the school should make each child feel welcome by accepting the local folkways, speech, dress, attitude toward authority, and slang the child brings— even if this requires some trade-offs with the teacher’s authority and expectations of scholastic achievement, mastery of standard English, and assimilation to mainstream cultural norms or standards. The case study chapters by Barnaby Riedel and Heather Lindkvist focus, respectively, on the school experiences of Arab Muslim youth in a private school in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, and Somali Muslim youth in a public school in Lewiston, Maine. At the Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois, an American Islamic parochial school allows considerable religious expressive liberty. Arab Muslims commonly critique the concept of “culture” and local custom. They work hard to downplay the significance of ethnic, national, and religious differences by emphasizing character development and universal values. In this case, an Islamic school works to create an inclusive but distinctively Islamic community by making common cause with ethical teachings and approaches that match the character education used in some Christian and secular public schools. Meanwhile, despite the commitments to equality and uniformity in the public school system in Lewiston, Maine, Somali Muslims have managed, more or less successfully (although not without tension over conflicting expectations), to preserve key parochial aspects of their cultural and religious heritage: female headgear, special foods at school lunch, prayer during school hours, and forms of modest female dress during gym class. These two cases are of special interest because of the way these two Muslim communities have made use of various interpretations of equality creatively to promote communal purposes, whether through a privately funded experiment in ecumenicalism or through a publicly funded experiment in the preservation of parochial cultural practices. In chapter 7, John Bowen describes the education system in France, where a national spirit of civic republicanism has evolved since the time of Bonaparte that holds (in part) that all extrafamilial experiences of children should be controlled by the ideals of political citizenship and equality. Historically the French state has strongly (and even coercively) discouraged the expression of any values supportive of social discrimination (for example, ethnic enclaves), in-group versus out-group selectivity, or parochial group identity below the level of the entire nation-state. In France, the identity of being a

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“citizen” is meant to trump all other communal identities. Looking at the educational system in France today—which is a country that resists viewing itself as “multicultural” despite substantial Muslim and African immigration in recent decades—Bowen finds the pursuit of a form of equalitythrough-individual identification with the nation. Hence the nation forbids distinctive signs of identity within the public schools in order to fight “backwardness, provincialism, and religious obscurantism,” while sorting students into three tiers in middle school for different professional destinies. At the same time he finds that the state supports religious institutions with financial and other assistance, hence ensuring free exercise for adults and a degree of pluralism. However, this is under the gaze and strict regulatory control of the state. In chapter 8, James Banks replaces the traditional dichotomy of liberal individual rights versus minority-group rights with a unified notion of multicultural citizenship as the single aspiration. It signifies a commitment to balance cultural, national, regional, and global identifications for students by means of a transformative program of citizenship education. It equips them with the capacities to challenge inequities in their communities and in the world, while closing the group achievement gap through culturally responsive teaching. In the closing chapter, Richard Shweder offers an analysis of four core liberal values, ideals, or “expectancies” and their relevance to debates about schooling. He suggests that the models of equality alternate between an inclusion agenda—which aspires to make it possible for individual members of all groups and factions to attain “mainstream” educational, socioeconomic, occupational, and political status—and a pluralism agenda—under which all factional groups get to sustain and perpetuate their cultural or religious differences, diverse ways of life, and distinctive communal revelations and identities through schooling. He draws our attention to the potential conflict between the two agendas: one is aimed at Americanizing, assimilating, and mainstreaming minority groups in the name of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, while the other is aimed at preserving cultural or subgroup diversity in the name of the autonomy and expressive liberty rights possessed by members of all groups. Some chapters in this volume focus on attitudes within particular communities (Sarat, chapter 4; Lindkvist, chapter 6). Some look inside schools and classrooms (Riedel, chapter 5; Banks, chapter 8). Others take a national perspective (Minow, chapter 2; Bowen, chapter 7); and still others deal primarily with concepts at the core of modern liberalism (Markus, chapter 3; Shweder, chapter 9). For some, the challenges of diversity appear to be more or less inherent in the nature of cultural identity; for others, the associated challenges are historically embedded in the communities in question. The equality-difference paradox may be an inexorable problem of modernity, or it

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may instead be the product of particular ways of thinking about identity and group membership. All of the chapters share the view that issues of identity and community deserve an importance neglected in the implementation studies and economic analyses that dominate national educational policy debates and research. With schools as the flash point of critical debates over identity and equality, the starting point of all the chapters is the particular challenge posed by widening economic and social disparities and significant demographic shifts, with special salience of Islamic communities as a test of multiculturalism and democratic inclusion. While none of the chapters argue that schools can “solve” the tension between liberal equality and group recognition, all of them acknowledge that schools are and will remain critical sites for working out and debating that tension.

What’s at Stake? People repose extraordinary and often conflicting hopes in schools. Especially in the United States, the ideas of meritocracy, self-made men and women, social mobility, and democratic participation forge and color national identity and community investment. Thus, schools have been burdened—or empowered—by hopes of reforming society, remedying racial and economic stratification, producing harmony across ethnically and culturally divided groups, launching individuals on paths to economic success, passing on cultural inheritance, and allowing children to discover the freedom to invent themselves. Schools may often be just schools—simply a place where children learn their lessons. But they may also be vehicles for justice. Any single nation whose members come from and affiliate with multiple cultures must struggle with the challenges posed by conflicting hopes for schools. For the United States—given the legal and social commitments to equal opportunity, the absence of any single cultural tradition, the centrality of education to the dream of overcoming slavery’s legacy, and the waves of migration across and immigration to the country—the struggle cuts to the core of national purpose. Ensuring that subgroups within the general population are able to coexist with each other, revitalizing a framework of ordered liberty, avoiding destructive conflict and intolerance, helping each individual contribute to the general well-being of the nation, and promoting the capacities of the next generation to take up the obligations of citizenship—these are the challenges for justice in education. The chapters here are efforts to deepen our understanding of the practical terms of these challenges and to get behind the labels that so often stymie insight. Although they are just schools, educational institutions inspire people to devise new vehicles for dreams of justice. Equality and difference both have their homes in that struggle for just schools.

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Notes 1. Chief Justice Roberts cited this quote in his decision in the case, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007). It is from the case Miller v. Johnson (1995) (plurality opinion), quoting Metro Broadcasting (1990) (Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dissenting). 2. The dissenting opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007), (Per Breyer, J., dissenting, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsberg, the plurality opinion), held that the plurality opinion “[m]isapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation, and it undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality. This cannot be justified in the name of the Equal Protection Clause.” In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Kennedy quoted School Comm. of Boston v. Board of Education (1967), in which the court rejected arguments comparable to those accepted by the Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 majority: “It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment.” 3. The average white student attends a school where 79 percent of the students are white; African American and Latino students are most likely to attend schools that enroll two-thirds African American and Latino students. 4. See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007), section B2, which discusses successes in some exemplary black schools and historically black colleges. Also see United States v. Fordice (1992). 5. The anthropologist John Caughey writes, “Thus, not only does democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart” (1986, 229). 6. Public Law 107-110, codified at 20 U.S.C. 1118 et seq., accessed December 18, 2007 at http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf. 7. During recent years, the number of children with at least one immigrant parent has grown to one in five children enrolled in kindergarten through twelfth grade in U.S. public schools. This reflects the entrance of over 14 million immigrants to the United States during the 1990s. Hence, “the share of children of immigrants among the school-age population increased rapidly, tripling from 6 percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 2000. By the year 2010, children of immigrants will represent 25 percent of the K–12 student population,” with higher concentrations in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey) (Fix and Capps 2005). 8. A similar debate arises over ability grouping and identification of children with special needs for separate instruction: does a focus on the unique child call for

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sorting students by abilities or does it call for integrating students in a common classroom while teachers and aids attend to the unique child’s strengths and limitations? Attending to the learning styles of different students can boost their learning and demonstrated achievement, but the internal organization of a diverse student body into ability tracks can entrench suspicion and stereotypes across race, ethnicity, and class (Orfield and Losen 2002). 9. Educational programs that acknowledge or embrace multiculturalism in turn face critique from both conservatives and radicals.

References Appiah, Anthony Kwame. 2007. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Barnard, Wendy Miedel. 2004. “Parent Involvement in Elementary School and Educational Attainment.” Children and Youth Services Review 26(1): 39–62. Brown v. Board of Education. 1954. 347 U.S. 483. Bryk, Anthony, Valerie Lee, and Peter Holland. 1993. Catholic Schools and the Common Good. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Casserly, Michael. 2003. Beating the Odds: A City-By-City Analysis of Student Performance and Achievement Gaps on State Assessments. Council of the Great City Schools. Accessed at http://www.cgcs.org/pdfs/bto3.pdf. Caughey, John. 1986. “On the Anthropology of America.” In Symbolizing America, edited by Herve Vareen. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press. Dillon, Sam. 2007. “Alabama School Rezoning Plan Brings Out Cry of Resegregation.” New York Times, September 17, 2007: A1. Fix, Michael, and Randy Capps. 2005. “Immigrant Children, Urban Schools, and the No Child Left Behind Act.” Migration Information Source, November 2005. Accessed at http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=347. Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition?: A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange. Translated by Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke. New York: Verso. Fryer, Roland, and David Austen-Smith. 2005. “An Economic Analysis of ‘Acting White.’” Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(2): 551–83. Glazer, Nathan. 1998. We’re All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gratz v. Bollinger. 2003. 539 U.S. 244. Grutter v. Bollinger. 2003. 539 U.S. 306. Honneth, Axel. 1996. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Kaestle, Carl F. 1983. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang. Kymlicka, Will. 1996. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Metro Broadcasting. 1990. 497 U.S. 602. Miller v. Johnson. 1995. 515 U. S. 900, 911. Minow, Martha. 2001. “Key-Note: Before and After Pierce.” University of Detroit Mercy Law Review 78: 407.

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Morrison, Emily Fergus, Sara Rimm-Kauffman and Robert C. Pianta. 2003. “A Longitudinal Study of Mother-Child Interactions at School Entry and Social and Academic Outcomes in Middle School.” Journal of School Psychology 41(3): 185–200. National Center for Educational Statistics. 2006. “Projections of Education Statistics to 2015, Table 1.” Accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/projections/tables/ table_01.asp. National Competitiveness Council. 1998. “Statement on Skills.” Accessed at http:// www.forfas.ie/ncc/reports/nccskills/intro.htm. Orfield, Gary, and Chungmei Lee. 2004. “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or ‘Plessy’s Nightmare’?” Unpublished paper, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Orfield, Gary, and and Daniel Losen, editors. 2002. Racial Inequality in Special Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1. 2007. 557 U.S. Peshkin, Alan. 1991. The Color of Strangers, the Color of Friends. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. Pierce v. Society of Sisters. 1925. 268 U.S. 510. Rudolph, Frederick, editor. 1965. Essays on Education in the Early Republic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rumbaut, Rubén G., and Alejandro Portes, editors. 2001. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Sen, Amartya. 2007. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. School Comm. of Boston v. Board of Education. 1967. 352 Mass. 693, 227. N. E. 2d 729, 733. Sleeter, Christine E. 2001. “An Analysis of the Critiques of Multicultural Education.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks. New York: Macmillan. Taylor, Charles. 1992. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. United States v. Fordice. 1992. 505 U.S. 717, 745. Wisconsin v. Yoder. 1972. 406 U.S. 205.

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Part II SCHOOLING AND THE EQUALITY-DIFFERENCE PARADOX

2 WE’RE ALL FOR EQUALITY IN U.S. SCHOOL REFORMS: BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Martha Minow

W

hen a group of parents sought to include their religious holiday in the set of public school holidays, the school board voted ten to zero against the proposal. When an applicant asked the Board of School Examiners to offer the examination required for public school teaching applicants on a day other than her religious Sabbath, the Board refused her request and prevailed in court over her legal objection. The outcomes were similar, but the two events, both in the United States, are separated by one hundred years. It was Ida Cohn, an Orthodox Jewish applicant, who failed in her challenge to the Saturday exams for public school teachers in Buffalo, New York, in 1905 (Cohn v. Townsend 1905), while it was a group of Muslim parents who failed to convince the school board in Baltimore, Maryland, to add Eid el-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, to the school holiday calendar in 2005 (“Parents Push Public Schools to Be More Muslim-Friendly,”Associated Press, December 5, 2005; “Religion and Ethics,” BBC, September 30, 2005). Each event arose in the midst of unprecedented levels of immigration to the United States (Suárez-Orozco and Qin-Hilliard 2004), and each reflected debates over how the nation should respond to national, ethnic, religious, and racial differences, so their parallels are not perhaps too surprising. Nor, perhaps, are the results surprising given the pressures toward assimilation and the conscious and unconscious fears of long-term residents about the newcomers. Yet during the intervening time, social movements and legal advocates in the United States have tackled issues of race. Other social movements and legal advocates have addressed similar (and different) issues of language, gender, and disability. Following the lead taken by the civil-rights movement on behalf of African Americans, diverse advocates pushed for accommodations for members of minority religions, immigrants, students learning English, and students with disabilities. Converging around the idea of equal opportunity as an organizing framework for schooling, there are disagreements among advocates, school administrators, and other commu-

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nity members about what precisely “equal opportunity” does and should mean. Yet rather than simply fight over this question time after time, current advocates, school administrators, parents, and students now have greater chances to install their own vision due to the proliferating options of schooling in America. These options include innovations within public school systems, such as magnet and pilot schools, that offer specialized programs and permit parents and students to elect particular school assignments. Charter schools offer another source of innovation and variety. These are funded by the public but created and governed by entrepreneurial groups—whether composed of teachers, parents, corporations, or religious groups—who propose and manage new schools. Still more options come within reach for many families as communities, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, experiment with publicly financed vouchers to pay for private school tuition. This new era of diversification in education allows parents and students to express their preferences among many options. Through innovation and competition, communities are developing a range of schools; some offer a science and math curriculum, and others offer a focus on the arts. Still others invite students to sort themselves by ethnicity, or gender, or even sexual orientation, as the schools offer specialized programs in Arabic studies or English immersion for new immigrants; some promote themselves by creating all-female classrooms. New York has created the Harvey Milk School, a high school that offers a safe space for gay, lesbian, and transgendered youth who have faced harassment in the mainstream schools.1 The legacy, or ghost, of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka’s (1954) constitutional prohibition of legally mandated racial segregation in schooling as a denial of equal protection of the law hangs over these innovations. Equality has become the overarching concern in the design and evaluation of school programs, but people with opposite visions lay claim to the legacy of the Brown decision. Hence, people supporting the expansion of the Harvey Milk School claimed to be heirs of Brown in pursuing equal educational opportunity for students who had been denied their chances in the past. Yet protestors who mobilized against the school’s expansion named it a “separate but equal” solution and claimed it abandoned the integrative vision of Brown (“Protests Mar Opening of Expanded Harvey Milk School,” New York Times, September 9, 2003, B3; Minow 2004). Four members of the U.S. Supreme Court asserted in 2007 that “color-blindness” is the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 2007),2 while four other justices pointed to the decades of Supreme Court decisions directing explicit use of racial school assignments in order to desegregate schools.3 The ninth justice, Anthony Kennedy, sought a middle ground in retaining the possibility of race-conscious policies to remedy racial isolation in schools, while making it the last

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resort to use the specific assignment of individual students to schools based on their race.4 Hence, sophisticated people disagree over the implications of the commitment to equality. Some hold that it calls for color-blindness (and hence, official indifference to the racial, ethnic, religious, gender, linguistic, and disability characteristics of individual children) to avoid stereotyping and reducing individuals to group traits. Others say that it inspires measures to ensure integration across these lines of difference in order to overcome prejudices and build school communities that prepare students for a multicultural world. Disagreements over these visions reach beyond the context of race, where the demographic facts require more complex analysis of multiple racial and ethnic groups than the common focus on two or three categories. Even if there was no disagreement over whether integration remains an attractive and lawful ideal, it is difficult to analyze whether a school bringing together Mexican American, Puerto Rican American, Caribbean American, Chinese Asian, Vietnamese American, Indian American, Pakistani American, African American, and African immigrant students should be deemed “integrated,” or if integration requires a palpable presence of white students. The situation is complicated if the white students are themselves primarily recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. Is integration primarily an ideal directed at overcoming the legacies of slavery in this country; overcoming misconceptions about racial, ethnic, and religious differences; or socializing all students to conceptions of citizenship, academic achievement, and career aspirations that have been associated with middle and upper class communities? Beyond the idea of undoing state-ordered separation of students of different races, the scope of educational integration as an ideal and as a lawful practice remains unclear and contested. Does it permit deliberate public efforts to mix students of different backgrounds? Does it require integration, or does it permit separate instruction along the lines of gender, immigration, language, disability, and religion? Is integration along any of these lines an end in itself, or is it only a means for achieving the fundamental goal of equal opportunity? In an era of school choice and reform, sharp disagreements over precisely what “equality” requires fuels fights in existing and new school programs and policies. All of these debates reflect the times in which they unfold. Thus, it is important to pause for reflection on one more pair of historical events that frames this discussion. In this comparison, the two events—9/11 and World War II—are more different than the same. After 9/11, although schools witnessed outbreaks of anti-Muslim expression, school officials, nongovernmental organizations, and even the federal government mobilized to combat negative responses to Muslim, Arab, and other immigrant students.5 During World War II, Japanese American students were removed from their homes

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and schools and sent to internment camps. That experience is now taught in American public schools as a warning lesson about fear and prejudice.6 If we pay attention to the impact of the past on how the present is understood, we may better understand both the continuity and change in the fights over schooling and the treatment of students’ differences (Glenn 1996).7

Race In the United States, the treatment of race is central to the legal and political treatment of any other form of “difference,” and the struggle over racial equality in schooling is the inevitable touchstone for the treatment of immigrant students and indeed any other student group marked by a socially significant difference. Racial history in the United States is of course deeply entwined with the history of slavery. At its founding, the United States not only permitted slavery and protected the rights of slaveholders to their “property,” but the new nation also allowed states to apply criminal sanctions to anyone who taught a slave to read.8 After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Amendments declared equal protection of the laws to all persons and extending suffrage to men regardless of race, yet schooling remained scarce or inadequate for African American students. Jim Crow laws excluded southern black children from schools attended by white children and confined black students to schools with minimal resources. Rural schools lacked resources, and urban schools for African Americans were severely overcrowded (Patterson 2001). Some northern philanthropists invested in schools run for and by African Americans. However, even with these efforts, whites had access to at least three times the educational resources available to African Americans.9 The Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson explicitly upheld racial segregation in the context of public transportation under the principle of “separate but equal.” This meant that the Court condoned segregated schooling as well. As southern blacks moved north, new practices of segregation in schooling and housing, combined with the tradition of local finance for schooling, exacerbated differences in the opportunities available to white and nonwhite students (Douglas 2005; Watras 1999; Hirsch 1983; Formisano 1991). Efforts to improve schooling for African Americans preoccupied reformers for decades. Some of their work addressed the financing of schools, which laid the ground for litigation over school finance that persists to this day (McUsic 1999; National Conference of State Legislatures 2007). Although the ideal of the “common school” focused more on reaching immigrant and poor children than African Americans—and it reflected preoccupations with Catholic and Jewish immigrants who threatened white Protestant conceptions of America (Brumberg 1986)—it offered an ideology that assisted reformers who were committed to racial uplift and later to racial equality

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(Kaestle 1983).10 The strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) exposed the failure of southern states to provide equal, if separate, educational facilities. They did so first in highereducation settings where the separate black schools were either nonexistent or a sham, and then in elementary and high school settings given the obvious disparity of resources between black and white schools. The U.S. Supreme Court became the focal point for this struggle. Some reformers hoped for a racially integrated society, with schools as a vehicle, while others focused on securing comparable resources for black students. The two approaches converged with the recognition that “green follows white”: the dollar follows the white children, and white voters could not keep resources away from black children if they were seated next to white students in the same schools (Ryan 1999a, 1999b).11 With Supreme Court precedents in these areas built up like stepping stones, there were many precedents to cite when, in 1954, the Court announced its landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.12 After years of challenging disparate funding for black schools, the NAACP argued further that the sheer fact of state-mandated segregation in schools produced inequality both by signaling inferiority and by depriving minority children of access to the resources and networks available to whites. The advocates also pointed to emerging work in social science that addressed the psychological experiences created for black students by segregation.13 The Court agreed unanimously. The Court reasoned that, “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” Further, even if the tangible factors of school resources are comparable, racially segregated education deprives students of equal opportunity by enforcing a racial hierarchy. This can create a sense of inferiority among African American children and can impair their opportunity to learn. Moreover, segregation deprives students of the chance to interact with others and learn from them. The decision rejected the use of official state power in separating students by race, deeming it unconstitutional. The Court declared that the doctrine of “separate but equal” could no longer satisfy the demands of equal protection of the law, at least in the context of public schooling. Widely understood to equate integration with equality of educational opportunity, the Brown decision also elevated public awareness of schools as a central symbol of national treatment of difference: would that treatment take the form of subordination or equal regard? The massive and at times violent white resistance to desegregation in schooling, mass transportation, public swimming pools, and elsewhere (Wilkinson 1979) inspired desegregation supporters to mobilize the March on

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Washington in 1963. They pushed for national civil-rights legislation and federal involvement in both implementing desegregation and investing in schooling. The U.S. Department of Education describes the results in this way: The anti-poverty and civil rights laws of the 1960s and 1970s brought about a dramatic emergence of the Department’s equal access mission. The passage of laws such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, and disability, respectively made civil rights enforcement a fundamental and long-lasting focus of the Department of Education. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act launched a comprehensive set of programs, including the Title I program of Federal aid to disadvantaged children to address the problems of poor urban and rural areas. And in that same year, the Higher Education Act authorized assistance for postsecondary education, including financial aid programs for needy college students. (U.S. Department of Education 2006)

Yet over time the ideal of integration diverged from the ideal of educational opportunity. During the 1970s and 1980s, school desegregation continued to face political and then legal resistance. The courts began to distinguish those schools that were segregated due to explicit official action from those schools in which segregation resulted from complex patterns of residential segregation, economic-class differences, and the district lines between cities and suburbs. In response, more public attention turned to African American voices mourning the loss of the autonomy and community strength which could be found at least in some segregated black schools (Bell, Jr. 1987a).14 Indeed, as early as the late 1960s, the Black Power movement and related articulations of community pride reclaimed minority-dominated schools as sites of self-determination and community control. A predominantly minority school can be staffed by teachers who look like the students, hold high expectations for the students, and involve families and community (Bell, Jr. 1987b; Edmonds 1980).15 Ongoing work in the social sciences exposed continuing damage to minority members from the stereotyped thinking as well as impairments of minority students’ self-esteem who associated their identities with inferiority— whether in segregated or desegregated settings.16 Recent studies suggest that desegregation without improvement of educational services may do little to improve the achievement of minority students (Hansen 1993; Brown 1990; Davis 1989). Researchers and politicians, as well as white, black, Latino, and Asian families, have united to question whether integration is the solution to unequal educational opportunities.17 Yet some continue to stress the importance of integration in giving minority-group members access to social networks and economic mobility (Ward Schofield and Sagar 1983; Stuart Wells 2001; Bowen and Bok 1998; Roithmry

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2004). The data suggest that going to an integrated school increases the likelihood that a black student will finish high school and score higher on standardized tests (Liebman 1990a, 1990b). Many studies seem to confirm the common-sense view that students of color do not succeed in an environment that puts them down or degrades them, regardless if it is segregated or integrated. Yet integrated settings, if designed to be genuinely supportive, open up avenues for greater success and narrow the gaps in achievement otherwise prevailing for white and nonwhite students, including Asians and Hispanics.18 The courts do not, however, develop doctrinal treatments of desegregation by keeping up with social-science developments. Political resistance, the flight of white families from urban public schools, and frustration with longstanding court supervision of school districts have all contributed to judicial disengagement with school desegregation by the turn of the twenty-first century. That disengagement by the courts in turn reflected and reinforced disillusionment over Brown’s promise of equality (Irons 2002; Orfield 1999). From the 1980s to the present, judicial, legislative, and administrative initiatives sought less to integrate than to redistribute resources and improve inadequate schools, serving predominantly nonwhite students. However, these initiatives have had at best mixed results (Cashin 2005; Henig et al. 2001; Orfield 2001). The conjunction of schooling, identity-based social movements, legal strategies, and equality provided a template for the country’s treatment of minority groups even though integration no longer serves as the gold standard or even a universally desired ideal. Nonetheless, some school boards convinced by the social-science research or moved by the vision of an integrated society have enacted voluntary desegregation plans, usually combining aspects of parental and student choice among district schools with guidelines or goals to produce diverse enrollments across the system. When the majority of the Supreme Court, in a hotly contested decision, rejected even these voluntary approaches in two instances, the Court opposed official school efforts to maintain racial balance goals where they could deny a student his or her preferred school assignment. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s separate opinion, supplying the crucial vote rejecting the programs in Seattle and Louisville, differed from the plurality and found diversity to be a potentially compelling interest, justifying official measures other than assigning individual students to schools based on their racial classification. The four dissenting justices emphatically defend integration as an ideal (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 2007). The lessons are ambiguous: Should integration or community control be the ideal? Is equality of opportunity better advanced by equality of resources, by common side-by-side schooling,19 or by identity-based schools, organized and run by leaders of each community? These and other alternatives reflect the struggle over racial equality in schools. As Brown’s legacy alongside the assumption that equal opportunity is the central goal for American schools.

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This assumption in turn carries the inchoate tension over the relative importance of cultural accommodations, resource reallocations, and integration of diverse students in achieving equal opportunity. These three ideas organize the politics of recognition, the politics of redistribution, and the politics of integration.20 The politics of recognition tends to refer to the struggle over public respect and accommodation for the experiences, privations, and goals of a particular group (Taylor 1992).21 Given the historic struggles against slavery and racism, the politics of recognition for African Americans in the United States involve demands for attention to the legacies of slavery and racial segregation as well as their contribution to the continuing racial gap in school achievement. For those who do not speak English at home, the politics of recognition calls for sufficient use of alternative languages, such as Spanish, in schools to make the setting welcoming and to ensure no disadvantage to students who are not yet fluent in English. Yet, the politics of recognition can converge with the politics of redistribution. Redistribution usually involves reallocating economic and other resources to produce equal chances for student success, which may call for spending more on those who are disadvantaged. Whether defined in terms of equal starting points or similar results, equality as a goal in schooling involves parents, teachers, politicians, and judges in debates over funding schemes, teacher salaries, test scores, and programs and strategies to redress continuing achievement gaps between white and nonwhite children. The politics of recognition emphasizes group identity even more than the politics of redistribution, for the very identity of the group organizes the arguments for recognition, respect, and accommodation. Redistribution in contrast requires attention to group membership in keeping track of the effects of policies, but it permits a greater focus on individual achievement. The politics of redistribution involves not only monetary resources, but also less tangible elements of political and classroom attention. Inevitably, the redistribution project asks whether disadvantaged students—and the groups with whom they identify—do better with more funding. Empirical studies point in different directions and no doubt reflect in part the intense ideological and political issues behind economic redistribution.22 Redistribution could involve a more explicit focus on academic achievement and less attention paid to identity issues, as in the No Child Left Behind Act, the major education reform put forth by President George W. Bush, for it requires each participating state to generate high standards and devise accountability measures to keep track of student achievement—with specific attention to students sorted by race and ethnicity in order to reduce the achievement gap. Redistributive efforts thus could shift more intensive resources for students with disadvantages. But it could instead demand deliberate efforts to create comfortable and recognizable communities and culturally responsive instructions, so that disadvantaged students—notably, students of color, poor

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students, and immigrant students—have role models, peers, reading materials, and an entire educational environment that creates a sense of belonging and ownership (Banks, chapter 8, this volume). What may be most striking, though, is the elimination of integration as a strategy or goal from the search for equality. Brown v. Board of Education itself implied that redistribution and recognition would converge through racial integration. By sharing the same classrooms, white and African American students would each be recognized as equal participants; economic and cultural resources available to white students would be shared with African American students. Most fundamentally, however, the integrational ideal called for redistributing the “resource” of the student relationships so that white and African American students would interact and learn from and with one another. It appears that the widespread failure of court-ordered desegregation has put integration largely out of the picture, and made either recognition (in the sense of instruction mirroring the students’ identity) or redistribution more salient solutions (McUsic 1999; Rebell 1998). Redistribution themes may appear more dominant in legal strategies, while recognition efforts—engaging minority communities in embracing their heritages and identities—permeate day-to-day school programs and administration.23 Some communities have pursued voluntary racial-integration strategies, combined with school choice and school improvement, but court challenges put even these strategies in jeopardy (“Brown v. Board of Education, Second Round,” New York Times, December 10, 2006, 4:1; Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 2007). Yet the missing option of integration resurfaces in the subsequent struggles over schooling and many other lines of group difference.

Language, Gender, Disability, and Religion Brown v. Board of Education enshrined equal opportunity as the aspiration, if not the given, for students whose primary language is not English; immigrants; girls as girls and boys as boys; students with disabilities; students from impoverished neighborhoods; gay, lesbian, and transgendered students; and religious students. The racial-justice initiative expanded to include all of these groups of students. Today, American public schools are preoccupied with the aspiration of equality and the language of inclusion. Educational experts address what kinds of instruction actually promote equal opportunities for all children, while the contrast between integration and homogeneous instruction recurs as both a policy choice and political hot potato. Propelled by the 1963 March on Washington—and pushed through Congress by the masterful President Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—the 1964 Civil Rights Act included “national origin” in its scope of protection. It quickly became a vehicle for addressing immigrant children whose primary language is not English. The Department

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of Health, Education, and Welfare exercised its authority under the Civil Rights Act to issue guidelines governing bilingual education and students learning English. In 1974, the Supreme Court found the San Francisco school district in violation of those regulations because it failed to develop programs specifically addressing the needs of Chinese-speaking students (Lau v. Nichols 1974). Here, the problem was not segregation but integration without modified instruction. Including the Chinese-speaking students in the mainstream classroom without accommodation amounted to discrimination on the basis of national origin, which is forbidden to a school district receiving federal financial assistance. The Court found that the Chinese-speaking students received fewer benefits than the English-speaking majority. Here, impact rather than intention became the measure of illicit discrimination, and integration without accommodation became unacceptable. This opened the door to instruction tailored for a specific group, and hence separated them from others (Minow 1990). Advocates persuaded Congress to adopt further legislation in 1974, requiring recipient schools to take appropriate action “to overcome language barriers that impeded equal participation by its students in its instructional programs” (U.S. Congress 1974b), extending some federal aid to schools offering bilingual education (U.S. Congress 1974a). Advocates also pursued bilingualeducation programming in court and before local school boards (Ryan 2002), but some decision makers rejected bilingual education as the sole, desired, or required means for achieving equal educational opportunity.24 Empirical evidence strongly suggests that the quality of the teachers is a more significant factor in student achievement than the choice between bilingual instruction and English-immersion (Felton 1999). This kind of insight led some to defend continuing experiments with bilingual education on the grounds that it has never been given a fair chance, while it led others to emphasize that separate instruction will never be equal, practically or symbolically.25 Intense political pressures on both sides of the debate over bilingual education affect the quality and perception of evaluation efforts. They have fueled both a movement to legally ban bilingual education and judicial challenges to those bans (Chandrasekhar 2003).26 Both sides claim to represent the ideal of equal educational opportunity with performance on standardized tests and mastery of English as goals. But the bilingual education advocates also emphasize cultural preservation and preparation for global citizenship, which exhibits a politics of recognition (Chandrasekhar 2003; Mora 2002). A civil-rights framework also came to dominate schooling for females, although single-sex education, if voluntary, could persist alongside coeducation options. The 1964 Civil Rights Act (Title VII) included gender as a forbidden ground of discrimination, and the 1972 Education Amendments (Title IX) extended that norm.27 Yet the analogy between race and gender has al-

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ways been disputed. Especially contested is whether separate can ever be equal in the gender context, despite the rejection of “separate but equal” in the context of race (Littleton 1987). Partly because the historic ideology surrounding gender accorded women—or at least white privileged women—a special place in home and family as a separate sphere, the inclusion of women in male settings has at times seemed to involve a loss of privilege or protection (Littleton 1987; Brown et al. 1971; Minow 1985). Nonetheless, the analogy to Brown inspired advocates for women’s rights to challenge single-sex education. Requiring gender desegregation, in some settings, this also would demand redistribution, and open up to girls educational resources—such as the previously all-male exam school within a public high school system—previously available only to boys. This effort generated mixed results and ongoing debates, while elevating equality and civil rights as organizing frameworks (DeBare 2005). Thus, the Supreme Court has rejected single-sex education in nursing, a traditional women’s field (Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan 1982), and in military training, a field in which women were historically excluded (U.S. v. Virginia 1996). Yet the Supreme Court could not reach a majority view about single-sex public schools in which enrollment is voluntary and the program is “substantially equal” with other schools (Vorchheimer v. School District of Philadelphia 1977). Depending on the variations in the design of schools—and different interpretations of these decisions—single-sex education could be constitutional or it could be unconstitutional. This may depend on whether the schools seem effective in remedying educational disadvantage (Jenkins 2006; Levit 2005; Morgan 1999). The decision of an appellate court—Vorchheimer v. School District of Philadelphia (1976), which permitted sex-separated secondary schools—remains the leading but inconclusive case in this area. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit distinguished race and gender for purposes of separate education by asserting that real differences remain by gender but not by race, and by emphasizing the value of local control and family choice (Vorchheimer v. School District of Philadelphia 1976). The effect of this decision has been to permit reforms admitting females in all-male schools where no comparable opportunities exist, while preserving existing all-female schools and promoting new all-female schools through a combination of tradition, informal policy, and “success in warding off the handful of boys who express interest” (“Planners of a New Public School for Girls Look to Two Cities,” New York Times, July 22, 1996, B1; Salomone 2003).28 Although Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and its regulations forbid discrimination on the basis of gender in any educational program that receives federal funds except under very limited circumstances, in 2005, the Department of Education issued a rule announcing new flexibility, allowing more room for single-sex instruction and schools (Office for Civil Rights 2005).29

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This shift toward single-sex schools reveals the ambiguous meanings of equality. As part of his push for standards in K–12 education, President George W. Bush included statutory language permitting the use of federal funds in “same-gender schools and classrooms (consistent with federal law).” Then, in 2002, the U.S. Department of Education—perhaps as part of a campaign year strategy—issued a proposed rule to open up more opportunities for single-sex instruction (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance 2002).30 Four years went by with no final rule adopted. The government seemed to devise the proposed rule, without proceeding to a final rule, in order to encourage experimentation with single-sex schools before issuing a final rule that could be challenged in court (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance 2004; National Association of State Boards of Education 1997; Beaucar Vlahos 2004). Then, in October 2006, the Department of Education announced its final rule permitting instruction in single-sex classrooms and schools (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance 2006; “Federal Rules Back Single-Sex Public Education,” New York Times, October 25, 2006, A1). Now, instead of forbidding single-sex instruction with public dollars other than in exceptional circumstances, the federal government permits such instruction to increase diversity of educational options and to meet specific needs of students (69 Fed. Reg. at 11,276). The school system does not have to provide a similar option for members of the other gender (71 Fed. Reg., at 62,534). The Department of Education rejected objections that single-sex instruction would reinforce negative stereotypes (71 Fed. Reg. at 62,533). With the focus on improving educational outcomes, justifiable diversity should apply to the types of educational options, not merely to the characteristics of the members of a particular class (71 Fed. Reg. at 62,534-35). Whether in coed or single-sex settings, the watchwords for girls’ education are equal opportunity and choice. Advocates increasingly also call attention to boys’ learning needs and educational difficulties while using the language of equal opportunity.31 Such arguments might reduce the chances of success for court challenges to the final rule. Students with disabilities comprise one more group triggering a civilrights conception in schooling, though again, both separate and integrated instruction persist as avenues for pursuing equal opportunity. Prior to the 1970s, only seven states provided education for more than half of their children with disabilities (Zettel and Ballard 1982). Those children with physical and mental disabilities who did receive educational programming did so largely in classrooms or schools removed from their peers. Parents and educators pressed for both more funding and for experiments placing students

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with disabilities in regular educational settings (Hughes and Rebell 1996). Two landmark decisions produced orders in 1972 requiring free public educational programs for students with disabilities (Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania 1971, 1972), and Congress followed with legislation shifting the framework for dealing with people with disabilities from care for dependents to enforcement of rights (20 U.S.C. sections 1400-1490 2006; Rothstein 2000). From the start, the federal law recognized both the benefits of specialized instruction, tailored for the individual child’s need, and the value of integration—known in this context as mainstreaming or inclusion. Thus, the federal law called for appropriate education, based on individualized assessment of the child’s need, but also established that, to the maximum extent feasible, the school system place the child with disabilities in the “least restrictive environment” (20 U.S.C. 1412 (a)(5) 2006), while still meeting the needs of the individual child (Section 1412 (5); 34 C.F.R. section 104.33(b)(1)(i) 1973). The statutory scheme promotes identification of students who could well have gone undetected in the past—and protections against faulty identification, which could produce stigma, and misallocation of resources.32 The law offers participating states money in exchange for plans to ensure appropriate education as well as related services and administrative procedures for creating individualized education plans with parental participation and opportunities for review (20 U.S.C. sect. 1401, 1414, 1415 2006). Before the adoption of the law, nearly 70 percent of children with disabilities who received education did so in separate classrooms or separate schools (Hughes and Rebell 1996). With implementation of the law, supported by the advocacy and related changes in educational philosophy that it represents, by 1996 over 70 percent of students with disabilities spent at least part of their day in the regular classroom with other students.33 Nearly half (47 percent) of students with disabilities now spend all their time in the mainstream classroom.34 Courts initially ordered mainstreaming only if it was shown to be beneficial, but over time judges began to read the statutory call for mainstreaming to “the maximum extent appropriate” (20 U.S.C. sec. 1412(5)(B) 2006). Here, integration is an explicit goal; redistribution is also at stake, as students with disabilities seek both access to mainstream classrooms and additional resources to assist their learning in those classrooms and in substantially separate settings. Some disability groups—most notably, the deaf and hearing impaired—pursue recognition and affirmation of their distinctiveness (Ohna 2003; Young 1999), but the fights over special education more commonly focus on redistribution and integration. Perhaps the most surprising echo of Brown v. Board of Education in American schooling appears in the treatment of religion. Yet in both the context of public aid to religious schools and in the treatment of religion in public

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schools, concerns about equality have reframed preoccupations with separating church and state. Inspired by scholarship and led by a litigation initiative in the courts, the movement for equal treatment of religious students is especially noteworthy because it reframes the issue as one of civil rights for individuals rather than separation of church and state (McConnell 1992, 2000, 1990a).35 The relevant legal doctrines pertain to the First Amendment’s prohibition against state establishment of religion and the First Amendment’s prohibition against restrictions on freedom of speech, rather than the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. Thus, advocates persuaded the Supreme Court to focus on how it looks when a university denies funding to a student publication that is religious but grants funding to other student publications (Rosenberger v. University of Virginia 1995). Characterized as an act of impermissible viewpoint discrimination, that discrimination involved restrictions that subsidized some but not other student speech. Although operating with the doctrine of freedom of expression, the Court’s viewpoint discrimination analysis addressed exclusion of students when others, similarly situated, received public resources. Thus the analysis resonates with the harm addressed in Brown v. Board of Education. Because the issue is governmental funding of speech, and the framework is the First Amendment’s freedom of expression, the Court concluded that the denial of funding amounted to viewpoint discrimination; it rejected the defense that public funding of a religious publication would amount to establishment of religion (Edelstein 2004). The Court similarly pursued an equal treatment approach when it rejected the decision by a public elementary school to deny a religious program use of the public school facilities for an after-school program as illegal viewpoint discrimination (Good News Club v. Milford Central School 2001). The Court again reasoned that concerns to avoid unconstitutionally aiding or endorsing religion would provide no defense, and treated the establishment clause itself as a ground for neutral—and equal—treatment of religious and nonreligious groups. In the same spirit, congress adopted the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act (20 U.S. C. Sect. 7905 2006) to ensure that students who want to use school space and time for religious activities are treated the same as students who want to pursue other activities at school.36 These developments eased the path toward a shift in the judicial treatment of religion in public schools. Between 1960 and 1990, the courts had pursued a notion of the wall between religion and state as the means for implementing the establishment clause. This included forbidding school-led prayers (School District of Abington Township v. Schempp 1963).37 With some pressing by religious families, students have secured accommodations for their religious practices in many public school settings through, for example, adjustments of school dress codes and permission to use spaces for prayer during the school day (“U.S. Takes Opposite Tack from France in Head Scarf De-

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bate,” International Herald Tribune, April 3, 2004, 8; “Schools Loosen Limits on Prayers,” Washington Times, September 4, 2005, accessed at http:// www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050903_100052_4381r.htm). Even when it comes to public financial support for parochial schools, lawyers have ably shifted the legal framework from the establishment clause to the framework of equality defined as neutral treatment: religious and nonreligious programs should be treated the same (Green 2004; Laycock 1997; Marshall 2000; Volokh 1999; McConnell 1986). Reversing prior concerns about public dollars aiding private religious schools, in 2002 the Court approved Cleveland’s use of public funds in the form of vouchers that low-income parents can use to select religious schools for their children (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris 2002; Carlton Smith 2003). The Justices in the Court’s majority used the occasion to further abandon a previous effort to separate government and religion, and to replace it with a concern for ensuring neutrality by government, neither favoring nor disfavoring religion. As a result, prior decisions banning direct public subsidies for religious indoctrination fade in importance; indeed, a neutrality criterion might even find constitutional defect in a school-voucher scheme that explicitly excludes only religious private schools (Minow forthcoming). The Court also emphasized that private individual decisions to use public resources break the chain between government and religion, and parental decisions to elect religious programming insulate children from alleged governmentally sponsored coercion or pressure, even when those programs make use of public resources. Fundamentally, Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s 2002 opinion for the majority approved the voucher scheme in Cleveland as neutral because it permitted public funding not only of religious schools but also traditional public schools, other private schools, conventional public schools, new charter or “community schools,” and specialized magnet schools comprising the choice options within the public school system. This set of choices, in the Court’s view, ensured government neutrality; the city neither favored nor disfavored religion, but instead it treated religious choices by parents the same as choices for nonreligious schools. The Court also found that any worrisome tie between government and religion was avoided in the voucher scheme, which involved parents in choosing how to use the vouchers. The majority opinion seemed remarkably untroubled by practicalities, such as the fact that 96 percent of the parents elected religious schools with the vouchers. The dissenting justices worried about the kind of neutrality or private choice that could be involved if the choices resulted in religiousschool selection for 96 percent of those using the vouchers. The dissenters also warned about new kinds of divisiveness as different religious groups come to compete for public resources and socialize children in potentially less than universalistic values. Justice Clarence Thomas, who took both Justice Thurgood Marshall’s seat

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and place as the sole African American on the Court, wrote his own concurring opinion. He stressed that Brown’s promise remained distant because of the deterioration and continuing segregation of urban schools. Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged the irony that although vouchers seemed a tool to promote white flight at the time of Brown, nearly fifty years later vouchers could open quality instruction for students otherwise trapped in failing public schools (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris 2002). Practically, the voucher movement opens up religious schools to many poor and nonwhite urban students.38 No doubt the recognition of widespread failures in American urban schools and limited opportunities for poor and nonwhite children contributed to both the launch and judicial approval of voucher experiments. As a matter of internal legal analysis, the changes in judicial interpretation of the establishment clause that permitted public vouchers for religious schools in turn reflected at least in part the success of an equality framework for both the treatment of private speech (the government cannot discriminate on the basis of viewpoint) and the treatment of religion by government (the government can neither favor nor disfavor religion). These developments led the Court to overcome previous constitutional rulings forbidding the use of public dollars to aid religious schools, religious students, and religious ideas (Rosenberger v. University of Virginia 1995). In this respect, religious schools in the United States for the first time in over a century have access to large-scale public funding—precisely at a time when the demands of Muslims to be eligible, like Christians and Jews, for government funding for schools has triggered second thoughts in Great Britain (Parker-Jenkins 1999; Ansari 2004). The experiments with vouchers for private religious schools proceeding in the United States thus make the United States less different than it has been in the past when it comes to the separation of religion and publicly funded education, although few communities have not followed Cleveland’s lead. As a result, religious students and their families thus join the pluralist, multicultural arguments for assuring equal treatment in the model created by Brown and its advocates. An experiment with school vouchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has sustained religious schools that otherwise would not be financially viable (“Inside Choice Schools: 15 Years of Vouchers,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 15, 2005, A1).39 According to this article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on June 15, 2005, approximately two-thirds of the students attending Catholic and Lutheran schools in the city do so through the voucher program. The voucher program has also stimulated the development of twenty Christian schools run by African Americans and serving nearly all African American student bodies. Schooling in America remains a complex enterprise, including public and private institutions that are subject to local governance, funding, and state and federal regulation. Yet this complex system falls now under the aspiration of equal opportunity, with the multiple routes and latitude for the politics of

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recognition, or what many call “identity politics” (Rosen 1996; Calhoun 1994; Gitlin 1996; Young 1990). People with very different goals and preoccupations join in arguing for equal opportunity in education—but they disagree about what that does or should mean. During the more than fifty years since Brown v. Board of Education, integration across race, gender, disability, and religion has declined as either a constitutional requirement or a political commitment, but equal opportunity for each individual has become firmly entrenched, especially in education, as a symbol of community and national commitment. Hence, recent trends have severed the easy equation between integration and equality present in Brown. Equality may involve access to the same curriculum but not to the same classroom (see notes 32 to 34, which discuss the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), or it may involve choice in the selection of schools but not participation in identical programs (see endnotes 38 and 39, which discuss voucher programs). In some instances, as with accommodations for students with disabilities and religious students, the commitment to equal treatment also produces greater attention and sensitivity within traditional public schools. In other instances, increasing avenues for separate instruction (for example, by gender) implement the equality commitment. Decisions over how best to achieve that commitment continually generate intense political and legal disputes.40 Across the categories of race, language, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and religion, people have contested whether integration or separate instruction best achieves equality in each of these settings. Many educators emphasize that a clear and focused mission, shared by teachers and parents, is crucial to student achievement, and varied missions can each promote enhanced student performance (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Willinger 1994; Campbell and Wahl 1997). Given the apparent decline of the ideal of racial integration and the emergence of school choice, there is more support politically and substantively for the once controversial claims, epitomized in the work of legal scholar Derrick Bell, Jr. that Brown v. Board of Education required more spending for black schools, not desegregation. (Bell, Jr. 1987a, 1981, 1980, 1999, 1976; Harris 1993; Kennedy 2000).41 But the frame for debate over such claims has increasingly been overshadowed in the United States by a larger school-reform debate, pursuing more dramatic redesign of the institutions for delivering schooling.

Institutional Reforms Widespread perceptions that American schools are failing fueled a major nationwide movement for school reform over the past few decades. At the forefront have been business leaders, worried about American competitiveness and the qualifications of the workforce for jobs requiring increasing technical skills. They brought conceptions of competition and innovation to the school

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reform initiatives. Also central to the movement have been parents, teachers, and mayors, who have sought more control. Challenging established school bureaucracies and political arrangements, these reformers have pushed for performance standards, voucher systems to promote competition and consumer choices, site-based management, and other opportunities for innovation at the level of the individual school rather than the district or statewide system. One of the key themes pursued by a range of parents, teachers, business leaders, and other advocates as a motor for reform is parental choice.42 That concept combines a market-style consumer-sovereignty idea with notions of personal liberty. Parental choice stimulates competition among providers. It offers parents the role of consumers with power and opportunities for self-expression and self-definition. It pushes for transparent benchmarks for assessing school quality. As a result, states and localities have initiated institutional innovations.43 These include magnet schools—schools drawing students from an entire district by offering a special focus or high-quality curriculum. Vouchers permit poor students to use public funds to pay tuition in private schools. Charter schools allow groups of teachers, parents, or others to propose their own ideas for running an individual public school and securing public aid to do so.44 With the prod of federal legislation, states developed first voluntary and now mandatory testing of public school students to monitor their attainment of mastery especially in math and reading comprehension.45 The No Child Left Behind Act calls for annual testing of students in grades three through eight, according to plans developed by each state. It pushes for responses to schools that do not demonstrate progress on these measures (see note 55, which discusses NCLB). Such testing is intended both to motivate individuals and schools, and to produce measures that permit comparison—and competition—among schools and even among states. The idea, not yet realized in practice, is that with multiple competing schooling options and information from standardized tests results, individual parents can make more informed choices about their children’s education. Funders, both public and private, can decide the best use of their educational dollars. Failing schools are then expected to close or change their methods. Critics charge that the focus on limited math and reading tests narrows instruction in ways that disserve genuine learning and critical thought (“Editorial,” Washington Post, August 29, 2006, A14). Inadequate funding—for teachers, tutoring, and other supports—undermines the act’s goals and violates the rule against unfunded federal mandates (National Education Association n.d.). Other critics fault the Act for focusing on meeting a threshold score for passing the required tests rather than on students’ progress (“Editorial: No Child Left Behind Applied Behind Bars,” Baltimore Sun, December 9, 2006, 1A ). Critics also charge that the Act confuses state and federal standards, producing waste and undermining intended accountability (“Ranking

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Confusion: Schools Can Pass and Fail,” Indianapolis Star, August 10, 2006, 1). Yet even with these many problems, the push for national accountability in education has advanced the proliferation of school settings and educational strategies. Given the development of explicit performance measures and outcome goals, everyone concerned with schooling can propose alternative ways to achieve them and can advocate competition among the alternatives as a strategy for overall success. Hence, as paradoxical as it may seem, the increasing federal role in education represented by the No Child Left Behind Act supports rather than displaces the plural and diverse approaches emerging within local and regional school systems through magnet and charter school initiatives and vouchers for private education. These options can engage parents and students in the very process of selecting schools and thereby promote greater family involvement, which is a strong factor in student achievement. The pluralist framework can also attract talented people who otherwise would not have pursued teaching or educational administration. Besides offering multiple avenues to pursue school-achievement goals, this pluralist framework offers new avenues for the politics of recognition. Individual schools can offer programs intended to appeal to particular subcommunities or to advance particular visions of education. Even when they couple these special identities with commitments to excellence and educational achievement, the result may well be more segregation and homogeneity in classes and schools. Thus, in 2001, Minneapolis and St. Paul established two new schools, the Twin Cities International Elementary and the Twin Cities International Middle School (“An Oasis for Learning,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 2, 2003, 1E). One account reports, “ELOM International Academy will promote a learning environment based on West African culture which embraces and accelerates our students as respectful leaders through academic and social discipline” (accessed at http://www.elomacademy.org/mission.php). Drawing students mainly from the large Somali immigrant population in the area, the schools serve halal food (appropriate for their largely Muslim student population) and the schools also teach Arabic (both because of the students’ background and to prepare all students to live in a global society).46 The dress code permits head coverings and all girls pictured in the schools’ materials wear scarves or hijabs. It is hard to imagine anything like this occurring in 1905, when Ida Cohn lost her bid to gain access to the public school teachers’ examination. Then, public schools in the United States explicitly pursued the goal of assimilating all students, especially new immigrants, to American culture, language, and values (Brumberg 1986). Schools and even states tried to forbid the use of and instruction in languages other than English, and they did not allow any room for parents or community leaders in the schools (Brumberg 1986).

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Since that time, however, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of parents to select schools other than state-run schools in order to satisfy the compulsory-schooling requirement. It is hardly a coincidence that one of the plaintiffs in that landmark decision was the Society of Sisters, who ran a Catholic school (Pierce v. Society of Sisters 1925). The Catholic school movement was in large measure a direct response by Catholic immigrants to the Protestant culture and anti-Catholic sentiment in many public school systems (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993).47 Yet that 1925 vindication of pluralism still put the burden on the minority community to establish and finance their alternate schools. A further legal step had to occur to permit public sponsorship of the Twin Cities International Schools in Minneapolis. This step came with the charterschool initiative; this institutional innovation authorized groups of teachers, parents, or community members to create individual schools with their own defined mission and character while receiving the same per-pupil public sector expenditures as traditional public schools. Legislatively authorized, the charter-school process elicits proposals by parents, teachers, business people, or other community members for specific schools that receive charters—essentially, performance contracts—from the public school system. The charter-school movement itself started in Minneapolis officially in 1991 and quickly spread; by 2003, forty states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, had enacted legislation authorizing charter schools. In the 2004 to 2005 school year, three thousand charter schools enrolled seven hundred thousand students. Some charter schools offer a particular focus, such as technology or the arts; others emphasize ambitious academic goals (Green and Mead 2004). In some charter-school programs, universities have been key players in authorizing and monitoring charter schools.48 Some states require a sponsor, such as a school board or a university; others do not.49 All states demand that charter schools must be nonsectarian; they must be open to all and free for all students. Although often exempt from systemwide rules governing textbook adoptions and even unionization, charter schools operate as public schools. They also must be academically and fiscally accountable to the public school system as well as to the parents who choose to send their children there. Charter schools combine elements of alternative schools, site-based management, privatization, magnet schools, and parental choice.50 Diverse supporters wanted to increase accountability by individual schools for student achievement. Parents, teachers, community groups, religious organizations, and business leaders can obtain greater control of schooling while pursuing diverse academic programs and school missions (Minow 1999). In many states, the charter-school process also allows groups to bypass teacher unions and traditional political channels such as school boards. When Hurricane Ka-

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trina devastated New Orleans, the federal government used the occasion to subsidize the already failing local schools with an infusion of charter-school aid (“U.S. Gives Charter Schools a Big Push in New Orleans,” New York Times, June 13, 2006, A5). States and localities are still considering ways to improve monitoring and accountability, given the innovations in governance represented by charter schools (Callahan, Sandovnik, and Visconti 2002). Many schools target particular populations, such as low-income children of color, English-language learners, or students with learning disabilities; they offer a program designed with those students in mind (U.S. Charter Schools 2007).51 For example, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy in Lansing, Michigan, offers an Afrocentric curriculum (U.S. Department of Education 2006). In this school, 97 percent of the students are African American and 3 percent are Hispanic, while other schools in the same city schools enroll 42 percent African American, 16 percent Hispanic, and 36 percent white students. In a field of such schools, the Arabic-language Twin Cities International Schools do not seem unusual, but instead they take their place in the menu of different schools designed for different kinds of students. In this sense, charter schools embody both the commitment to variety and choice in education, while also permitting schools to specialize in mission and tone in ways closely tied to students’ identities.52 With charter schools, specialized magnet schools run by the public system, and publicly funded voucher systems for private schools, equality may still be the overarching framework, but universal and shared experiences—the ideal of the common school—are no longer the means. Along with magnet schools and private schools, charter schools allow communities to pursue multiple pathways for educating children in a diverse society. Absent commitments to ensure diversity within each school, the self-selection process and differentiation offered by these varied school settings can contribute to more homogeneity and segregation, rather than the integrationist ideal of the civil-rights movement. New kinds of inequalities can occur in the new world of school choices. Different families and communities have different abilities to navigate the emerging system of choice in education. Making sense of the options; getting in line for the charter schools, the voucher program, or the magnet schools; and knowing how to get off the waiting list are abilities that are not equally distributed in a population that includes new immigrants working three jobs, parents who never completed high school, and others who lack higher education or time to invest in learning about the school choices. The charter process could well draw the most talented and motivated teachers away from traditional public schools, leaving less imaginative and motivated teachers to teach the children of the parents who are also less able to navigate the system. In addition, the competition among schools that is the desired effect of

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charters may well produce schools with diverging goals, methods, and identities. The very existence of charter- and magnet-school programs may skim the most active, motivated, and informed parents, or those most alienated from the dominant schools, away from the mainstream public schools. Different charter schools draw different kinds of students and parents. The process that generates charter schools may also produce schools of varying quality, undermining the goal of equal opportunity. Other forms of inequality may emerge because of segregation, even when it arises in voluntary or “recommended” placements (Malakidis 2006). Special schools designed for new immigrants may take a less voluntary form, however. Some districts have founded “newcomer schools” that offer separate facilities for recent immigrants. These schools are intended to provide a comfortable transitional environment, and they include bilingual and bicultural education while offering support for students who previously had little schooling or literacy instruction in any language (“Schools to Open Special Program: Newcomer’s Academy Will Help Hispanics with Language Barrier,” WinstonSalem Journal, April 22, 2003, A1). Reformers creating these schools are especially worried about the probability that enrollment in regular schools will frustrate adolescent immigrant children and lead them to drop out. By design, these schools separate immigrants from other students for at least a year and sometimes longer, in order to provide tailored instruction and supportive environment. Yet questions remain: How can such programs avoid stigmatizing the students? Do they provide inferior resources and instruction? Does integration work any better when it does occur—and does it actually occur or do students drop out? Concentrating recent immigrants in particular schools may have counterproductive effects; it may worsen the sense of distance that these students already feel from the country and their nonimmigrant peers; and it may worsen the prejudices and misinformation about the new immigrants in both their peer groups and the broader community. A concentration of immigrants in separate schools may also produce new problems, such as tensions among rival Cambodian gangs, appearing, for example, in recent years in Lowell, Massachusetts.53 Yet conventional public schools also pose problems for new immigrant groups if the communities do not quickly develop cultural and linguistic competence (Kellar 2005). Many school officials remain worried about the moment when Englishlanguage learners must be counted within schoolwide English assessments for their scores and push for exemption from such tests at least during the first year of schooling in the United States.54 Some school officials indicate that inclusion of recent immigrants who do not know English would distort what the schools actually are achieving both with these students and with the students who already speak English. Yet exclusion of those students may undermine the effort to focus on these students and their learning. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, costly remedial efforts as well as stigmatizing sanc-

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tions are attached to schools with low performance scores. Backlash against the law has led states to seriously consider opting out of the funding that attaches the assessment obligations.55 As noted earlier, critics charge that the law focuses too much on testing while skimping on learning, produces onesize-fits all approaches (including single-test measures rather than multiple measures of success), causes insensitivity to the situations of students with special needs or students learning English, and results in the use of impossible standards designed to produce too much student failure and too much blame for teachers (Jehlen 2006). The Act may in some contexts exacerbate inequalities by spotlighting failing schools without providing resources to assist them. The template of equality, recast to encompass pluralism, multiculturalism, and school choice, may suppress deeper questions about how best to address the needs of immigrant students in the United States.

Where Are We Now? School reforms in the United States over the past sixty years reflect contrasting frameworks, although each can be understood as a means for pursuing equality. Even the standards movement, devoted to raising expectations for and achievement of students, depends on a fundamental commitment to include all students in these high expectations. The focus on integrating students with different backgrounds and races within the same schools animated at least some version of the common-school movement during the nineteenth century and a large element of the civil rights strategy from the 1930s through the 1970s. A contrasting theme emphasized the development of schools with distinctive missions, tailored to students with particular identities and needs; this view, captured to some degree by the politics of recognition, animates public and private single-sex schools; private religious schools; schools for “newcomers”; schools for students with an interest in particular languages; and a school for gay, lesbian, and transgendered youth. These schools make the bet that there is not only no trade-off between academic achievement and cultural pluralism, but there may actually be opportunities for enhanced achievement in schools with specialized missions that are aimed at students who share much in common, even though the emerging schools have little claim to heterogeneity or integration. The proliferation of choice—across public and private schooling and within each system—tilts toward this pluralist framework and reflects the rise of market rhetoric and concepts throughout society. Of course, within the plural array of schools, some schools could and do continue to feature heterogeneous student bodies—racially integrated, coed, inclusive of students with disabilities, and inclusive of immigrant students. But not many of the newly forming schools are advertised with this as a leading feature.56

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Quite apart from their potentially segregating effect, some specialized schools prompt controversy. An Arabic-language public school in New York City provoked opposition by some who feared it would sponsor terrorism. According to a September 14, 2005, article in the New York Sun, a comment by the designated principal led to her ouster—and her replacement by a Jewish principal—before the school opened (“Jewish Woman Taking Over at Arabic-Language school,” 1). Yet the general trend toward plural options, distinctive missions, and parental choice itself is largely well-received and shows no signs of abating. If the focus is entirely on student achievement, measured by test scores, college graduation, and job success later in life, the choice between integrated or homogenous schools may be far less significant than the creation and maintenance of schools with a strong sense of mission and commitment to all the students who attend them. Yet the choice among these kinds of schools could have a larger importance for the character of the polity and the sense of mobility and identity experienced by individual students over time. On that dimension, we need to pay serious attention not only to the American experience, but also contrasting approaches to schooling in other diverse democracies (Banks and Lynch 1986; Glenn 1996).

Notes 1. 2.

More information is available at “The Harvey Milk School,” at About Gay Life (accessed at http://gaylife.about.com/cs/comingout/a/harveymilk.htm). The plurality opinion in this case included the following argument: In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954) (Brown I), the Court held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because government classification and separation on grounds of race themselves denoted inferiority. Id., at 493–494. It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954. See id., at 494 (“‘The impact [of segregation] is greater when it has the sanction of the law’”). The next Term, we accordingly stated that “full compliance” with Brown I required school districts “to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis [author’s emphasis].” (Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300–301)

3.

The dissenting opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007) includes the following argument: In dozens of subsequent cases, this Court told school districts previously segregated by law what they must do at a minimum to comply with Brown’s constitutional holding. The measures required by those cases often included race-conscious practices, such as mandatory busing and

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race-based restrictions on voluntary transfers. See, e.g., Columbus Bd. of Ed. v. Penick, 443 U. S. 449 , n. 3 (1979); Davis v. Board of School Comm’rs of Mobile Cty., 402 U. S. 33, 37–38 (1971) ; Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 441–442 (1968). . . . The compelling interest at issue here, then, includes an effort to eradicate the remnants, not of general “societal discrimination,” ante, at 23 (plurality opinion), but of primary and secondary school segregation, see supra, at 7, 14; it includes an effort to create school environments that provide better educational opportunities for all children; it includes an effort to help create citizens better prepared to know, to understand, and to work with people of all races and backgrounds, thereby furthering the kind of democratic government our Constitution foresees. If an educational interest that combines these three elements is not “compelling,” what is? . . . [S]ince this Court’s decision in Brown, the law has consistently and unequivocally approved of both voluntary and compulsory race-conscious measures to combat segregated schools. The Equal Protection Clause, ratified following the Civil War, has always distinguished in practice between state action that excludes and thereby subordinates racial minorities and state action that seeks to bring together people of all races. From Swann to Grutter, this Court’s decisions have emphasized this distinction, recognizing that the fate of race relations in this country depends upon unity among our children, “for unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together” (Milliken, 418 U. S., at 783 (Marshall, Thurgood, dissenting). Also, see an 1849 article by Charles Sumner, which states, “The law contemplates not only that all be taught, but that all shall be taught together” (327, 371). Also, in the dissenting opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007), Justice Stevens wrote, There is a cruel irony in The Chief Justice’s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.” Ante, at 40. This sentence reminds me of Anatole France’s observation: “[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”1 The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court’s most important decisions. Compare ante, at 39 (“history will be heard”), with Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U. S. (2007) (slip op., at 11) (Roberts, John G., dissenting) (“It is a familiar adage that history is written by the victors”). 4.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007) included the following argument:

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Parts of the opinion by The Chief Justice imply an all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account. The plurality opinion is too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race. The plurality’s postulate that ‘[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,’ ante, at 40–41, is not sufficient to decide these cases. Fifty years of experience since Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), should teach us that the problem before us defies so easy a solution. School districts can seek to reach Brown’s objective of equal educational opportunity. The plurality opinion is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. I cannot endorse that conclusion. To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken. . . . School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. These mechanisms are race conscious but do not lead to different treatment based on a classification that tells each student he or she is to be defined by race, so it is unlikely any of them would demand strict scrutiny to be found permissible. 5. 6.

7. 8.

46

For more information, see “Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee,” at http://adc.org/hatecrimes/education.htm. Some states require instruction in preparation for history standards tests; others provide for a day of remembrance about the internment and promote instruction in that context. More information is available from the National Japanese American Historical Society (2006). For a sample curriculum, see http://www .pbs.org/kqed/fillmore/classroom/internment.html. For more information on the treatment of students who are immigrants or members of racial, ethnic, or religion minorities in other countries, see chapter 7 of this volume. The U.S. Constitution’s enumeration clause apportioned representatives for each state, based on its population. As a compromise between northern and southern views, it counted slaves (described as “other persons”) as three-fifths of a whole person. Another compromise (Article 1, Section 9) allowed the slave trade to continue at least for twenty years. It limited Congress from prohibiting the “importation” of slaves before 1808. (Congress did prohibit importing slaves in 1808, but by that time sufficient numbers of slaves were already living in the nation for slaveholders to benefit from their reproduction.) The Fugitive Slave Clause expressly required Free states to deliver an escaped slave back to the home state upon the claim of the owner.

EQUALITY IN U.S. SCHOOL REFORMS: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Meantime, provisions in the states indicated the special laws governing slaves (see, for example, Slave Code of the State of Georgia, 1848, 11). Punishment for teaching slaves or free persons of color to read: “If any slave, Negro, or free person of color, or any white person, shall teach any other slave, Negro, or free person of color, to read or write either written or printed characters, the said free person of color or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the discretion of the court.” John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie contributed, but the biggest contributor was Julius Rosenwald, who made his fortune in the Sears, Roebuck and Company. He contributed $4.3 million, and African Americans in the South raised $4.7 million. Together these funds supported more than 5300 schools. Rosenwald Schools Initiative, (accessed July 13, 2006 at http://www.rosenwaldschools.com/#Peter); Diane Granat, “Saving the Rosenwald Schools” (accessed July 13, 2006 at http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF2004/Granat/ Granat.html. Horace Mann articulated the common school ideal that inspired state-level reforms throughout the country from the 1840s to 1900 (Tozer, Violas, and Sense 1995; Reuben 2005). Yet in the South and some parts of the North, African American children were not part of the vision of common schooling. There were exceptions: racial integration did become part of the common school movement in some places. Ironically, given the locus of Brown v. Board of Education, one of those places was Kansas. This can be seen in the opinion in Board of Education, City of Ottawa v. Tinnon (1881), which says that school boards lack state statutory authority to exclude black children from public schools: “The tendency of the time is, and has been for several years, to abolish all conditions on account of race, or color . . . and to make all persons absolutely equal before the law . . . At the common school, where both sexes and all kinds of children mingle together, we have the great world in miniature; there they may learn human nature in all its phases, with all its emotions, passions, and feelings, its loves and hates, its hopes and fears . . . But on the other hand, persons by isolation may become strangers even in their own country; and by being strangers, will be of but little benefit either to themselves or to society.” As James E. Coleman, Jr. writes in the case of whites hostile to minority students, “the only way to ensure an equal opportunity in that circumstance is to force the majority to educate their children in the same institution in which the minority students are being educated” (1996). The Court postponed announcing a remedy for another year (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1955), and actual implementation by local districts took more than a decade. For detailed background behind the cases, see work by Richard Klugar (1975) and Leon Friedman (1969). In footnote 11 of the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, the Court relied on studies that had been cited and in some instances sponsored by the NAACP. Thus, footnote 11 cited, “K. B. Clark, Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development (Midcentury White House Conference on Children and Youth, 1950); Witmer and Kotinsky, Personality in the Making (1952); Deutscher and Chein, The Psychological Effects of Enforced Segrega-

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14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

48

tion: A Survey of Social Science Opinion, 26 J. Psychol. 259 (1948); Chein, What are the Psychological Effects of Segregation Under Conditions of Equal Facilities?, 3 Int. J. Opinion and Attitude Res. 229 (1949); Brameld, Educational Costs, in Discrimination and National Welfare (MacIver, ed., (1949), 4448; Frazier, The Negro in the United States (1949), 674-681. And see generally Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944).” Subsequent work cast doubt on the particular findings of some of those studies. See work by Sara Lightfoot (1980), Edgar Epps (1978, 1975), Morris Rosenberg (1986), and Janet Ward Schofield (1995). One enduring legacy of Brown v. Board of Education is the judicial turn to social science, including debates over social scientific evidence (Heise 2005). Justice Clarence Thomas also struck this note in his challenge to the presumption that a school with a black majority could not provide an excellent education. (Missouri v. Jenkins 1995). For concern over the risk of losing other blackdominated settings, see articles by Sheryl Cashin (2001) and Lorne Fienberg (1992). For criticisms of Ronald Edmonds, see the article by James Comer, Norris Haynes, and Muriel Hamilton-Lee (1989). Among the most sophisticated is the study of stereotype threat. This work indicates how stereotypes operate in social interactions and shape outcomes consistent with the stereotypes (Markus, chapter 3, this volume; Steele and Aronson 1998; Steele 1997). Derrick Bell, Jr. was one of the first to question whether integration, as opposed to educational improvement, should be the solution to racial segregation (Bell, Jr. 1976). Some have returned to the Brown decision itself to question even the theory of stigma used by the Court to support desegregation (Brown 1992). For more information, see the Civil Rights Project (2002). Asian American students, diverse among themselves, present a different profile that is not meant to be summarized in the discussion in this chapter. Asian American students have successfully challenged some school desegregation plans which disadvantaged them (Ho v. San Francisco 1997; Liu 1998; Bowman 2001). Legal recognition of the potentially different interests of different minority groups distinctly complicates the prospects for desegregation plans (Levine 2003; Shaw 2004) and political approaches to civil rights (Gee 2001; Iijima 1998). In the context of gender, efforts to overcome group boundaries seem to reduce female students’ internalized sense of inferiority (Rosenthal and Crisp 2006). For philosophic debate over these concepts, see work by Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003). For critiques of this idea, see work by Anthony Appiah (2004) and Amartya Sen (2006). See work by James S. Coleman (1966), which doubts a link between funding and student achievement given the greater impact of parental class); Eric Hanushek (1996), which finds no positive relationship between finances and student outcomes; and David Card and Alan Krueger (1996). Also, see work by Julian Betts (1996), which critiques the study by David Card and Alan Krueger, doubting link between funding and achievement. Studies of the effects of resources on student achievement may neglect to distinguish wise and unwise allocations of the funds

EQUALITY IN U.S. SCHOOL REFORMS: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33.

(Ferguson 1998; Laine et al. 1996). The important impact of racial and socioeconomic integration on school results also complicates efforts to disentangle funding from other influences on student achievement (Ryan 1999b). Thanks to Kimberly Jenkins Robinson for this observation. The case Castaneda v. Pickard (1981) directed that school districts be evaluated in terms of adoption and implementation of a pedagogically sound approach for meeting the needs of limited English proficiency students. Both options may remain inadequate due to other factors, such as the economic class of the affected students and neighborhoods. See infra (discussing school finance and adequacy litigation). California still allows parents to elect either bilingual education or immersion under certain circumstances. For a critical view of the California reform, see work by Jill Kerpmer Mora (2002). For the legal status of bilingual education as articulated by courts, compare the decision in Castenada v. Pickard (1981) with Valeria G. (1998). For more information, see work by Barbara Whalen and Charles Whalen (1985). Also see a statement of Congresswoman Edith Green in 1964 (110 Cong. Rec. 2581) suggesting that Representative Howard W. Smith proposed to insert sex to prevent the passage of Title VII. For a more optimistic view, see work by Jo Freeman (1991) and Robert Bird (1997). Commentators cast more doubt on the constitutional basis for all-male schools, given the historical advantage of males in education (Levit 2005). Yet growing trends indicate risks of underachievement by boys and men (“Women Outpacing Men on U.S. College Campuses,” Chicago Tribune, July 12, 2006, C3; “What Girls Ought to Learn from Boys in ‘Crisis,’” New York Times, July 12, 2006, A1). However, there is also pushback on this issue (“The Myth of ‘The Boy Crisis,’” Washington Post, April 9, 2006, B1; “A More Nuanced Look at Men, Women and College.” New York Times, July 12, 2006, B1). See http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/t9-guidelines-ss.html for the current administration’s interpretation of the law. Proposing a rule and leaving it in that proposed state may reflect a political strategy. The administration gains points from supporters for pursuing this policy, avoids court challenge to it, and generates potential support from both experimentation and research efforts that could bolster the policy if it does reach a final rule and subsequent court challenge. On athletics, some courts have entertained arguments that girls need to be protected from the risks of injury in male contact sports (Force v. Pierce City R-VI School District 1983), and federal law leaves this as a local question (34 C.F.R. section 106.41 (b)). But the courts are tending to allow girls to try out for competitive, contact sports (Barnett v. Texas Wrestling Association 1998; Adams v. Baker 1996). Yet the courts also accept exclusion of boys from girls’ teams in order to preserve opportunities for girls (Clark v. Arizona Interscholastic Association 1982). Millions of students are currently identified as having a disability—and there has been a 30 percent increase in such identifications over the past ten years (National Education Association 2006). As of 1996, 34.9 percent of disabled children were placed in regular classrooms

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34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

50

full-time, and 36.3 percent were in part-time programs in regular classrooms; 23.5 percent were in separate classrooms, 3.9 percent were in separate schools, 0.9 percent were in residential facilities, and 0.5 percent were in hospitals or visiting programs in the students’ homes (Hughes and Rebell 1996). In the 1998 to 1999 school year, the states reported that 47 percent of these students spent at least 80 percent of the school day in regular classrooms, which is a notable increase over the 31 percent of such students who did so in 1978. This view should be distinguished from the conception that religion should never be treated differently from other personal views or commitments. The legal scholars Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager argue that equality would forbid the government from treating religion differently from any other category, even if that difference takes the form of a preference or accommodation (Eisgruber and Sager 1994). In contrast, Michael McConnell would still support accommodations for religious exercise that would not require comparable institutional adjustments for secular activities (McConnell 1990b). Under defined conditions, schools cannot deny equal access to students who wish to conduct a meeting if the basis for the denial is the content of the speech at such meetings (20 U.S.C. sec. 4071(a)). The Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation of this act and found it applicable to any extracurricular group (Westside Community School v. Mergens 1990). For a contemporary defense of the decision, see work by Robert Alley (1996). Participating in a voucher scheme is likely to subject a religious school to more state supervision than it would otherwise face (Minow 2002). Engagement with the secular society can involve a religious group in at least outwardly modifying its activities and status to fit in with the secular community (Stone 2002). According to this 2005 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, thirty-five of the participating schools are Catholic, twelve are Lutheran, twenty-two are other Christian denominations, three are Muslim, and one is Jewish. The article cites critics as charging that some of these schools lack adequate teachers and resources; some will not teach anything that departs from a literal interpretation of the Bible. For series on Milwaukee school voucher system, see http://www .jsonline.com/news/choice. Practical and even financial concerns arise. For example, a public school in Dearborn, Michigan, asked its Muslim students in 1997 to postpone observance of a holiday because if too many students missed school that day, and attendance fell below the legally mandated 75 percent minimum, and the school would lose $340,000 in funds (Sarroub 2005). Derrick Bell, Jr.’s position often suggests a belief that blacks will never attain equal status in the United States (Bell, Jr. 1992), even though he has also refrained from treating Brown and its principles as “wrong,” (Bell, Jr. 1987a; Tushnet 1987). Perhaps the most extreme version of parental choice appears in the burgeoning home-schooling movement. Still small as a percentage of the entire population, it nonetheless is among the fastest growing sector of American K–12 education (National Center for Educational Statistics 2003). Notably, however, the use of the racial identity of students to meet targets for enrollments or as a tiebreaker for oversubscribed schools was barred by the

EQUALITY IN U.S. SCHOOL REFORMS: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

44.

45.

46.

47. 48.

Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1 (2007) (“Supreme Court to Hear Seattle schools Race Case,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, June 6, 2006). For further discussion, see notes 1 to 4. The Massachusetts Department of Education website explains: “Charter schools are independent public schools designed to encourage innovative educational practices. Charter schools are funded by tuition charges assessed against the school districts where the students reside. The state provides partial reimbursement to the sending districts for the tuition costs incurred (Massachusetts Department of Education n.d.). Utah similarly describes its funding method for charter schools: “Charter schools are funded on the principle that state funds follow the student. Charter schools also receive appropriate portions of local money from the school districts in which the charter school students reside. Charter schools may also apply for state and federal start-up funds. A charter school may not charge tuition or require students or parents to make donations, and it is subject to the same rules regarding school fees as other public schools” (Utah State Office of Education n.d.; last update for website listed as November 2, 2005, but no date attached to mission statement). Some states fund charter schools at a lower level than conventional public schools. Thus, “Minnesota charters only receive the state portion (about 75 percent of a district school’s total per-pupil allocation); charters in New Jersey and Colorado also receive less than 100 percent of the per-pupil funding. In other states, charters must negotiate their funding in their charter contract, often below the level of funding of their district counterparts. In Arizona, charter students are funded at about 80 percent of their district peers” (Center for Educational Reform 2006). A key moment in recognizing the need to foster accountability testing came in response to the publication of A Nation at Risk by a national commission in 1983. At a meeting of governors in 1989, President George H. W. Bush joined the governors in articulating a set of broad performance goals for American schools, and in 1991, President Bush proposed voluntary national testing tied to standards. In 1994 President Clinton signed into law Goals 2000, which provided grants to help states develop academic standards. George W. Bush campaigned for presidency in no small measure on a proposal to enact school reform premised on testing in relation to national standards, and his major domestic accomplishment is the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 (Rudalevige 2003). According to the 2000 Census, the immigrant population in Minnesota included 125,000 Hispanics; 60,000 Hmong; 20,000 non-Hmong Southeast Asians; 11,151 Somalis; 6,000 Russians; 2,500 West Africans; 2,000 East Africans (not Somali); 1,600 Yugoslavians; and 500 Tibetans (University of Minnesota 2007). Also, see work by Kurt Lash (1995), who examines the pro-Protestant and antiCatholic dimensions of the Blaine Amendment and related policy debates during the nineteenth century. For example, look at the case of New York as of 2007. “There are currently 96 public charter schools in New York. Of those 96 schools, 43 were authorized by the State University trustees” (accessed at http://www.newyorkcharters.org/ documents/newschools/Approved10-26-07.pdf).

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49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

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Minnesota requires a school board, university, or other nonprofit sponsor (Minnesota’s Charter School Law 2005). Further legislation setting parameters for Charter School Advisory Councils implemented in 2007 (1240.10 MN Statutes). For information about the history of charter schools, see the website for US Charter Schools (accessed at http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/ o/history.htm). Also, see the January 7, 2003, article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Charter Schools Build on a Decade of Experimentation.” A center for the study of charter schools, housed at the University of Washington, issues regular reports on the performance and status of charter schools (Lake and Hill 2005). US Charter Schools (accessed at http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_ docs/scs/toc.htm). One study indicates that a larger percentage of minority and low-income students attend charter schools than traditional public schools (Lake and Hill 2005). Aggregated by state, student enrollment in charter schools shows a racial mix, but this does not indicate the degree of integration that occurs at the school level (National Center for Education Statistics 2002). Some local reports indicate that charter and voucher programs produce schools that are more homogenous because the schools attract subgroups within the community (“Michigan Has More Segregated Schools: Charters That Draw Students from Mostly Black Schools Drive Up Numbers,” Grand Rapids Press, February 15, 2006, 1; “Minority Students Continue Minneapolis Schools Exodus,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 22, 2006, 3B; Schnaiberg 2000). More information on this and related issues is available on a website that describes the documentary film Monkey Dance (2004). Also, see the website for the United Teen Equality Center (2007). The federal government has authorized a one-year exemption for new immigrants with regard to the English tests but not the math tests (“New Immigrants get Break on MCAS Test,” Boston Globe, February 21, 2004, B1). For more information, see the article in the Salt Lake Tribune on May 13, 2006, entitled “State Might Ignore Federal Education Guide and Follow Its Own.” This article explains how Utah considered rejecting federal mandate regarding teacher qualifications. Also, see the article in the Kiplinger Business Forecasts on September 13, 2005, entitled “States Pushing for Changes to Education Law.” It reports that more than forty states are questioning or opposing No Child Left Behind. In the November 14, 2005, article in the Pittsburgh PostGazette entitled “State of Rebellion,” (B7), George Will reports that fortyseven states have challenged some version of No Child Left Behind’s federal supervision of K through 12 education. An article in the Sunday Times on November 20, 2005 (“Testing Times in American Schools,” business section, 1) describes the frustration of many states, summed up by Connecticut’s legal challenge “arguing that implementing NCLB [No Child Left Behind] means it has less money to spend on books and other classroom essentials, and that the new tests are no more useful than the ones it has in place.” An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor on July 15, 2005 (8) reported that fifteen states are considering withdrawing from No Child Left Behind; Utah is leading the fight.

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56.

Furthermore, the National Education Association filed a suit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act as an unfunded mandate that could not require compliance. The federal district court dismissed the suit, and a similar suit brought by Connecticut (see Connecticut v. Spellings 2006), but a similar suit brought by school districts and education associations in Michigan succeeded in convincing the Federal Court of Appeals that the Act violates the spending clause of the U.S. Constitution (School District of the City of Pontiac v. Secretary of the United States Department of Education 2006). The Chancellor of the New York City schools defends No Child Left Behind as an important tool in improving schools (“Klein Gives Powerful ‘No Child’ Defense,” New York Post, May 10, 2006, 2). On the Act’s effects in reducing the achievement gap, see http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/achieve/report-card.html. Will schools cultivate abstract tolerance but also eager appreciation of the diversity of the society that globalized work worlds and complex democracies seem to demand? For more information on this topic, see work by Howard Gardner (2006). This may not always been the most comfortable lesson, but creating the taste and desire for important lessons is the mission of education. As Howard Gardner quoted Plato, “Through education, we need to help students find pleasure in what they have to learn” (2006, 41).

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Westside Community School (Board of Education of) v. Mergens. 1990. 496 U.S. 226. Whalen, Barbara, and Charles Whalen. 1985. The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Washington: Mentor Books. Wilkinson, J. Harvey, III. 1979. From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954–1978. New York: Oxford University Press. Willinger, Beth. 1994. “Single Gender Education and the Constitution.” Loyola Law Review 40(2): 253–80. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ———. 1999. “Ruling Norms and the Politics of Difference: A Comment on Seyla Benhabib.” Yale Journal of Criticism 12(2): 415–21. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. 2002. 536 U.S. 639. Zettel, Jeffrey J., and Joseph Ballard. 1982. “The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-142): Its History, Origins, and Concepts.” In Special Education in America: Its Legal and Governmental Foundations, edited by Joseph Ballard, Bruce Ramirez, and Frederick J. Weintraub. Reston, Va.: Council for Exceptional Children.

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3 IDENTITY MATTERS: ETHNICITY, RACE, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM Hazel Rose Markus

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recent poll of Latinos, Asians, and African Americans in California finds that more than 80 percent of the parents of each ethnic group have the very highest educational aspirations for their children (New American Media 2006). These parents expect their children to complete college, and many expect them to complete both college and graduate school. In New York, nearly every student surveyed in an in-depth ethnographic study of African American and Latino students from low-income families agreed that “getting a good education is a practical road to success for a young (Black/Hispanic) person like me” (Carter 2005). Despite a widely shared belief in the transforming effects of education and clear expectations of success, Latino American, African American, and American Indian students are dropping out of high school in crisis proportions. Nationwide, only half of minority students graduate from high school, let alone begin college (Orfield 2004). The hope of enabling all students to aspire to a college education and of providing them with an equal opportunity to fulfill their aspirations is colliding with the reality of schools in which race and ethnicity have become barriers to success. Many students experience their schools as unwelcoming and alienating spaces (Landsman and Lewis 2006; Olsen 1997). As expressed by one Filipina student, “So for us, school is just, you come to classes and you just sit there. And if you sit there long enough they give you a diploma. After a while you figure it out—you don’t get anything and you don’t give anything. The only ones who don’t get it are the ESL kids. People tell us, we should be more like them, we should try hard, and we should study as hard as they do. I get so mad! They are so blind! They still believe. But sooner or later, they’ll get it, too. We just don’t matter” (Olsen 1997, 60). That so many students are turned off and turning away from school is deeply troubling. The promise of equal opportunity at the heart of the American Dream now requires at least a high school diploma (Edley 2002; Guinier 2000). Why so many students do not complete high school or meet only minimal standards is

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the center of persistent, heated debate: some observers fault teacher preparation (Darling-Hammond 2004) and the level of school funding (Oakes et al. 2000); others emphasize families, social class, insufficient cultural capital, or the students themselves (Lareau 2003; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 2003).

The Significance of Identity One factor consistently linked to educational success across several decades of research in education and the social sciences is identity. The aspiration to stay in school and succeed in school requires developing a specific identity— in particular, an understanding of oneself as a student, learner, or achiever (Downey, Eccles, and Chatman 2005; Guay, Marsh, and Boivin 2003; Marsh 1990; Marsh et al. 2005; Steele 1997; Steele, Spencer, and Aronson 2002; Wenger 1998; Wortham 2004; Zirkel 2007). An identity as a student is critical to learning and achievement because it functions as an organizing and interpretive framework with a wide-ranging set of influences on a student’s behavior at school. A student identity gives selfrelevant meaning and value to one’s actions in school, fosters motivation and persistence toward achievement goals, protects against the distractions posed by nonacademic activities, and buffers threats to one’s view of the self as a capable, effective learner or achiever (Bandura 1997; Deci and Ryan 1985; Markus and Nurius 1986; Steele, Spencer, and Aronson 2002; Valentine, DuBois, and Cooper 2004; Eccles and Wigfield 2002). Identity as a student is not a sufficient condition for achievement; it does not take the place of skill development, but it is a necessary condition for learning and skill development. An identity as a student is not an inevitable or a natural consequence of going to school. This identity is more likely to develop, however, when students feel that they are welcomed, included, and belong (Foley and Moss 2000; Steele 1999; Walton and Cohen 2007). Despite the strong empirical foundation for the importance of identity in understanding behavior, identity is often a ready whipping boy in popular discourse. It is diminished as a middle class luxury or disdained as fostering divisive “identity politics” (Michaels 2007). In contrast, this chapter suggests that as communities learn to create public schools where more students feel they belong and can identify as students, equality of educational opportunity and ethnic and racial difference can coexist. Identity cannot be classified as a structural factor like teacher preparation or class size, or as an individual factor like student effort or responsibility. Instead, an identity as a student is a set of actions that identifying as a student and on being identified as a student by others. A student identity then is the result of an ongoing blend of one’s own thoughts and feelings about being a student in a particular school setting in combination with one’s perceptions of the reactions of others in the school setting. It is not a fixed or stable entity and is very responsive to the social content.

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Some students have the opportunity to develop an image of themselves as students in the context of others who share this image and who foster this student identity for them within the school. In this fortunate circumstance, many students will have the opportunity to develop an identity as a learner. Other students, however, often because of their ethnicity or race, will find the regard of others—a critical element of identity—to be missing, limiting, or devaluing, and they will not have the same opportunity to craft an effective identity as a learner. In this circumstance, many will fail to develop an identity as a student. How to reconcile difference and equality at school is increasingly the concern of scholarship in education, social sciences, and the humanities. These studies demonstrate the importance of identity to school achievement, as well as why ethnicity and race are often critical to the process of developing a student identity. If students are to have an equal opportunity to identify with school, two types of differences need to be taken into account: culturally derived differences—often called cultural or ethnic differences—and imposed status differences—often called racial differences. Culturally derived differences among students are differences in frameworks of meaning, value, and ways of living that derive through association with a particular ethnic group and are claimed and appreciated by those associated with that group. A second category of difference among students, imposed status differences, are differences in societal worth that derive from the evaluations and actions of those outside the group and are not claimed by those associated with the group. Both types of difference organize school life and academic outcomes; for many students, they are completely interwoven. Distinguishing culturally derived differences from imposed status differences matters because they vary in their sources and in their consequences, and they require different types of accommodations to realize the goal of providing equal opportunity for students to develop an identity as a learner.

The American Dream and the Social Constitution of Identity Central to the American Dream is a set of ideas: that how things are today is not the way they have to be tomorrow, that where you come from does not matter, and that anyone willing to work hard and play by the rules can have a fair chance at a successful and happy life. The model of the person embedded in this ideology is that of an independent individual who is free from the constraints of history, other people, and social systems. This model derives from Enlightenment philosophy, is reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and underpins the American legal and political systems (Hochschild 1995; Spindler and Spindler 1990). The person-as-inde-

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pendent model, which is given life in a broad and influential net of social customs and institutions, is in direct tension, however, with the fact that people are not just autonomous, separate, biological entities; they are also relational, interdependent beings (Markus, Kitayama, and Heiman 1997). The liberal individualism that abstracts and separates the individual from society makes sense of the practices of a capitalist society (Augoustinos 1998; Hall 2005; Plaut and Markus 2005), but it can also obscure the ways in which individuality is a product of history, and requires the engagement of the contextspecific ideas and practices of others. In fact, it is not possible to be a neutral, ahistorical, or asocial individual, or to achieve an identity of any type, without the contribution of others. People everywhere live in social networks, groups, and communities. Their thoughts, feelings, and actions are interdependent with the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. A significant evolutionary advantage of humans is that they enter a world replete with the ideas and products of those who have gone before them; they do not have to build the world anew (Tomasello 2001). People form bonds with others, help others, depend on others, compare themselves to others, learn from others, teach others, and experience themselves and the world through the images, ideas, representations, and language of others (Asch 1952; Bruner 1990; Geertz 1973; Shweder 2003). As a consequence, virtually all behavior is dependent on and requires others. Others—their thoughts, feelings, practices and products— make up the self and a person’s set of identities. To say that other people constitute the self is not, however, to say that other people determine the self. People are indeed individuals; they are intentional agents who can, if they wish, resist and contest the views of others. Yet since individuals are also members of groups—participants in communities where they are known to themselves and to others through significant social categories—they will necessarily be influenced by how others regard the social groups with which they are associated. Individuals are women, Texans, Muslims, African Americans, Europeans, Democrats, lawyers, artists, Ford factory workers, baby boomers, Christian Evangelists, and “blue state” dwellers. Such social identities are highly mutable and shuffled by context and circumstance. Though malleable and constantly changing in terms of their meanings and personal significance, these identities are not just labels. In any given circumstance, being seen by others in terms of these social categorizations can have real consequences for the individual (Thomas 1923).

Identities: You Can’t Be a Self by Yourself Identity in a given situation depends on lacing together how a person understands oneself with one’s understandings of the reactions of others in that situation. Both of these sets of understandings—those of self and those of others (im-

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mediate others, as well as implied or imagined others)—depend on the situation and are highly malleable (Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002; Steele et al. 2007). As an example, imagine a student, Christina Lopez, a twelve-year-old in a social studies class. She is a Latina who now speaks fluent English. With respect to self-conceptions, Christina may like the class, like the teacher (at least compared to her teacher from last year), feel that she understands the day’s lesson, and hope to become friends with the girl sitting next to her. She may also notice that on the teacher’s desk is a book by someone who also has a Spanish-sounding name. With respect to others’ conceptions, Christina may think the teacher likes her and notices she is paying attention, and that the girl in the next seat wants to be her friend. Christina at this moment is likely to be inclined toward school and may claim an identity as a student. Alternatively, imagine Christina in the same classroom with a similar set of self-conceptions but with different ideas about the conceptions of others. Christina may find that the teacher does not notice her or call on her, even though she feels she has been paying careful attention, and the teacher does not talk to her before the class as she did some of the other girls. Christina may also perceive that the student in the next seat is becoming friends with another girl and does not seem interested in her. She may notice that there is a display on the board that shows people using maps in their everyday lives and that none of those people look like she does. Christina at this moment is likely to be less inclined toward school, and her identity at that moment (her working or active identity) may not include a sense of herself as a student. Christina’s active identity in the social studies class emerges as she selects and then weaves together perceptions of herself with her perceptions of others’ views of her. Many factors influence the resulting identity pattern, including the person’s own current and past perceptions of self and others. Yet the perceptions of others’ views—those of family, friends, teachers, and society as a whole—are a major source of information about the self and are always part of an individual’s identity. In another class period, Christina is likely to be weaving together a somewhat different set of self and other conceptions. Assuming Christina wants to belong to school, as most students do at least initially, whether Christina develops a durable identity as a student will depend on whether, across the many situations of school, she feels recognized and understood, and whether she experiences the regard of others as valuing and expanding of her possibilities. If Christina often feels unseen, feels like she does not belong, or experiences the regard of others as devaluing and limiting of her possibilities in this class and in others, she may begin to search for explanations and begin to worry that her ethnicity or race—her difference from the teacher or the other students—is the problem (Perry, Steele, and Hilliard 2003). Studies of student experience in diverse classrooms find that such conceptions are possible even as well-intentioned teachers and school administrators believe they treat all their students alike

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(Landsman and Lewis 2006; Lewis 2003). Whether or not ethnicity becomes a barrier to developing a student identity will depend on which conceptions Christina emphasizes, and on how she interprets and combines them. It will also depend on the views, expectations, and reactions of other students and teachers in the school with respect to race and ethnicity.

Race and Ethnicity: Why They Matter for Student Identities In the United States, everyday life continues to be shaped by race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity predict health and wealth, as well as the quality of schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and medical care (Krysan and Lewis 2005; Massey and Denton 1992; Oliver and Shapiro 1997). Despite the hope expressed in the American Dream that who you are should not matter for success, in American schools—in ways that are increasingly well-researched and understood—who you are, or more particularly, who you aren’t, does matter (Blau 2003; Kendall 1983; Lewis 2003; Moses 2002). Given the powerful association between race-ethnicity and success that is evident in so many domains of American life, how people see themselves and how others see them—that is, their identities—will include reference to the racial and ethnic groups with which they are associated. The recognition and the status accorded to these categorizations will thus influence individual identities in many significant settings of American life. This will be the case even if the individuals themselves choose not to claim particular racial or ethnic identities and wish to be understood as separate from them. With increasing racial and ethnic diversity comes the awareness that schools are not, as typically assumed and taken for granted, neutral sites where any student has a chance to turn aspiration into successful reality. Instead, most schools have been designed, and are maintained, according to pervasive, historically derived European American normative understandings of what is good, valuable, and expected. These schools have not been explicitly designed to exclude or to foster inequality. Moreover, they are staffed by many who endeavor to provide the best education possible for all students. Yet they have evolved to promote particular ways of being in the world, and often reinforce a social organization that now systematically advantages the academic outcomes of some racial and ethnic groups over others. While people associated with minority ethnic and racial groups are typically keenly aware of how race and ethnicity can influence their experiences with others and their own perspectives (McIntosh 1990; Tuan 1998; Waters 1992), those associated with the majority ethnic or racial groups often imagine that they do not have a racial identity. Their mainstream perspectives and

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practices are experienced as normal, neutral, or human, and are not cast as “white” or as “European American” ways. They assume they are “nonethnic,” or perhaps “postethnic,” and that the classroom establishes a common ground. Yet, some students must travel much further than others, often without signposts, to reach this “common ground.”

The Blindness of Color-Blindness Ensuring that students feel they belong in school and ensuring that race and ethnicity are resources rather than barriers or sources of devaluation requires replacing the dominant colorblindness framework for thinking about difference. The independent model of the self, on which the concept of color-blindness is based, holds that where students come from, who their parents are, and their particular social affiliations and identifications are unimportant to the student or irrelevant to classroom activity. The color-blind model is widely endorsed in American society and is fostered and incorporated by the legal system (Plaut 2002). Converging research programs confirm that a color-blind ethos, a focus on the individual “free” from the constraints of the social world, is the mainstream American view (Blau 2003; Krysan and Lewis 2005; Moses 2002; Plaut and Markus 2005; Steele et al. 2007). Concerned teachers underscore their beliefs in equality and describe their efforts to see beyond race and ethnicity (Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002). Laurie Olsen, in an in-depth, ethnographic study of one diverse high school on the West Coast where discussions of multiculturalism are a mainstay, notes that, though teachers are proud of the way their school reflects the demographics of the real world, they claim that these differences are superficial. “We have a lot of different kinds, but I don’t see color. None of us really do, we just see all our students as the same. That’s what is so wonderful about [this school]” (1997, 180). Susan Dodd and Miles Irving suggest that in illuminating the blindness of color-blindness, it is useful to ask teachers who express this sentiment the question, “Who do you treat these students the same as?” (2006). As more educators turn away from an ethos of color-blindness and move toward the recognition and accommodation of difference, the questions of how culturally derived and imposed status differences can influence the construction of a student identity becomes significant (Foley, Levinson, and Hurtig 2000-2001). Culturally derived differences can be thought of as horizontal differences, or differences in meaning, values, and practices that need not establish a hierarchy among groups. Imposed status differences can be thought of as vertical differences that determine a hierarchy among groups. Culturally derived differences require that schools learn from their students and become more diverse and flexible in their educational practices. Imposed

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status differences require that schools resist and undo current practices and policies that rank and exclude.

Culturally Derived Differences Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Patricia Greenfield, and Elise Trumbull quote a teacher who said, I wanted to understand my students better so I started studying Mexican culture. Then I realized that the children in my class came from many distinct regions, each with different histories and traditions. I just knew that I would never know enough. I had to give up trying. (1999, 1)

American classrooms are brimming with cultural differences, and it is easy to sympathize with teachers who despair over learning how to be appropriately sensitive to differences among students. Differences classified as culturally derived differences refer to ways of being that people recognize and claim as their own. Acknowledging these types of differences and deciding if and how to recognize and include them within the classroom will depend first, on being explicit about which models of education are currently animating the classroom or school (Fryberg and Markus 2007), and second, on observing and listening to students (Levinson and Holland 1996). A classic definition by A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn states that culture consists of explicit and implicit patterns of historically derived and selected ideas and their embodiment in institutions, practices, and artifacts (1952; summarized in Adams and Markus 2004). Culture, then, is not about groups of people—the Japanese, the Americans, the whites, the Latinos—and thus it is not groups themselves that should be studied. Rather, the focus should be on the implicit and explicit patterns of meanings, practices, and artifacts that are distributed throughout the contexts in which people participate. To participate in any cultural world, people must incorporate relevant cultural models, meanings, and practices into their psychological processes (Fiske et al. 1998; Gutierrez and Rogoff 2003; Holland and Quinn 1987; Resnick 1994; Shweder 1991). A focus on implicit and explicit meanings and practices and how they shape behavior is the signature of a cultural analysis, and such an analysis can be applied to any social category. Ethnicity refers to distinctions based on cultural practices, such as shared language, heritage, national origin, religion, or ways of being and living (Omi and Winant 1994). These are common and time-honored ways in which groups of people categorize themselves. Ethnicity is often an important source of identity and behavior. However, many schools and classrooms are so diverse with respect to ethnic background that

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it is difficult to know what differences to note and how to appreciate them in a fair and pedagogically useful way.

Models of Self Among the most important cultural ideas and practices for understanding identity are cultural models of the self. Ethnic groups differ in region of origin, history and language, and also in the answers they give to the questions, “Who am I?”, “Who are we?”, and “What does it mean to be a student or an educated person?” (Fryberg and Markus 2007; Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Levinson 2002; Markus and Kitayama 1991; Nisbett 2003; Shweder 1991, 2003; Triandis 1995). Awareness of the divergence in models of self provides an initial key to understanding and responding to differences in ways of knowing and learning as well as to the differences in ideas and practices of performance, success, and achievement that can be observed in a diverse American classroom (Banks, chapter 8, this volume; Ladson-Billings 2006). In North America and in Northern Europe, a model of the self as independent is very pervasively distributed. This model is widely (although not universally) individually endorsed, and it also underpins the workings of many practices and institutions in these contexts. As noted earlier, it is this foundational model that underlies the very notion of color-blindness and the idea that race and ethnicity are superficial and can be transcended. This model places the focus on the achievement and success of the individual, emphasizing the importance of becoming “independent” from the influence of others and from the contingencies of the social world. Thinking is separated from feeling, mind is separated from body, and individuals are separated from their social context. Knowledge and its pursuit—often assumed to be the goal and currency of school—is an individual product unconnected to the arrangements of the social world (Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Markus and Kitayama 1991; Shweder and Bourne 1984). Notably, however, because it is impossible to live as an asocial individual or to achieve an identity without the contribution of others, the experience of independence is necessarily socially afforded and should be understood as a particular type of interdependence. The model of self as independent is the implicit model for most teachers in mainstream American contexts and the model that underpins most teaching practice, but it is not the only model of how to be a person and how to relate to other people and the world. Another model that is very widely distributed in contexts outside of North America and Northern Europe (as well as in some working class European American contexts) is a model of self as interdependent. When a model of self as interdependent organizes the social life, as it does in much of the world—Central and South America, Africa, and South and East Asia—people understand and experience themselves

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less as separate individuals and more as elements or parts of a larger, encompassing social unit. According to an interdependent model of self, individual behavior necessarily involves an explicit awareness of others and adjusting one’s behavior to that of others. Rather than separation from others, it is fitting in, being part of, and contributing to one’s family or other relevant groups that explains behavior. Achievement and success are not autonomous activities, but are instead relational activities that require awareness of the student’s relations with the teacher and with other students. Knowledge and its pursuit come through others and depend on an appropriate arrangement of the social world, including the student’s relationship with the teacher and other students (Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Markus and Kitayama 1991; Shweder and Bourne 1984; Triandis 1995). Schools reflect the models that are prevalent in their contexts. American schools, for example, are grounded in the independent model; almost all activities are scaffolded by this normative framework. Yet these foundational ideas and normative practices of how to be are rarely made explicit. Doing so is difficult because these ideas and practices are like water to fish or the air that people breathe: they are invisible except to those who have experienced other models. Ethnicity is one important source of these models of self. For students who are engaged in contexts where the interdependent model organizes behavior, and where people have been tuned to be aware of and adjust to others, crafting an identity as a student in a context that fosters the independent model of self may be a challenge. Some students may experience a mismatch or a discontinuity in many school situations (Ladson-Billings 1994; Nelson-Barber 1999). This discontinuity can be associated with misunderstanding, discomfort, or feelings of isolation and rejection, and subsequently with low achievement and a lack of success (Jordan 1985). In culturally diverse classrooms, providing equal opportunity is a challenge. Treating all students equally requires culturally responsive teaching and acknowledging identities other than the mainstream identities that are typically acknowledged and incorporated in educational practices (Banks, chapter 8, this volume; Fryberg and Markus 2007). Examples from various ethnic contexts illustrate the types of culturally derived differences in ideas and practices that can influence the development of an effective student identity.

Asian American Ethnic Contexts The most thoroughly researched differences in models of self are those between European Americans and East Asian Americans. These studies of how cultural contexts shape academic performance and achievement are useful

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because students of East Asian backgrounds often perform comparatively well, and, especially among America’s minority students, East Asians are least at risk for underperformance and dropping out. Chinese Americans are the largest group of Asian-origin immigrants in the United States, and they have settled in diverse sociocultural contexts (Zhou 2006). Within this diversity, students of Chinese background in the United States often share an appreciation of and a commitment to a Confucian tradition. This begins with explicit attention to interdependence, which includes cultivating the social order, knowing one’s place in the social order, and a general orientation toward meeting the expectations of others and being sensitive to the demands of the social situation (Hwang 1999; Tsai 2005). Many Chinese-immigrant parents believe that they are sacrificing for a better future for their children; children should work hard, show filial piety, and achieve at the highest level possible (Zhou 2006). Achievement is not understood as the result of an individual aspiration or goal; instead, it is an obligation to the family. To be a complete person, one must be formally schooled (Stevenson and Lee 1996). Ruth Chao, in a study of Chinese American and European American mothers’ beliefs about what is important for raising children, found that Chinese American mothers stressed the cultivation of a good relationship with the child, education for the child, respect for others, the child’s ability to get along with others, self-reliance, and maintenance of Chinese culture (1993). The European American mothers, in contrast, stressed nurturing and building the child’s individual self, which includes dealing with emotions and developing self-esteem, confidence, and independence. They also emphasized the creation of an environment that the child will experience as fun or enjoyable. Many American classroom practices are designed to foster this independent model of self. Beginning at the preschool level, European American teachers arrange their classes and lessons to allow the student to have a great deal of choice in their activities during the school day. Through choice, students can manifest their individuality, express themselves, and become active agents in control of their own actions. Yet for students who organize their actions with interdependent models of self, however, opportunities for individual choice and preference expression may be relatively less gratifying or motivating. In a study focusing on the role of choice in performance, seven- to nine-year-old Asian Americans and European Americans were given a choice of which category of anagram puzzles they wanted to solve (Iyengar and Lepper 1999). The researchers then counted how many puzzles they solved correctly. The puzzles were equally difficult in all categories and differed only in their labels. These participants were compared with a group of students who solved anagram puzzles that their mothers chose for them. As American educators would predict, European American students solved the

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most anagrams correctly when they chose the puzzle category themselves. In contrast, the Asian American children solved the most anagrams correctly when they solved anagrams their mothers chose for them. For European American students, who are socialized with ideas of individuality and autonomy, having another person pick which type of puzzle to solve is an imposition, an act that threatens their freedom and their individuality. In contrast, for Asian American students, who are likely to have been exposed to ideas of fulfilling parental expectations and to honoring the family, they understood that their mothers were trying to guide them and support them when their mothers chose their category of anagrams to solve. They apparently did not feel that their individuality or freedom had been undermined. Parental expectations are experienced less as a set of constraints to be overcome on the route to independence and more as scaffolding provided as needed support and direction. Given the cultural importance accorded to relationships, as well as to meeting expectations and adjusting oneself to the situation, some Asian American students may be particularly comfortable in structured academic situations. They may be somewhat less at home with classroom practices that are unstructured or that draw attention to the individual. In particular, activities that require talking or expressing themselves while others are watching, or those in which they are the center of attention, may be less attractive to those Asian American students who are tuned to maintaining their interdependence with others. In American classrooms, allowing students to have a “voice” is very important. In the Socratic tradition that is fostered in most American classrooms, asking students questions and encouraging them to express their ideas is a powerful aid to thinking and reasoning, and talking is closely related to thinking (Tweed and Lehman 2002; Wierzbicka 1994). In Confucian traditions, learning is less about questioning and doubting; it is more about listening and acquiring knowledge from exemplary others. From the time of ancient Chinese civilization, there has been a prevalent belief in East Asian cultural contexts that talking impairs higher-level thinking. Heejung Kim conducted a problem-solving study comparing European American and Asian American students for whom English was their first language (2002). She asked whether talking out loud while solving a problem enhances, impairs, or does not affect problem solving. Asian Americans were asked to think aloud as they worked on a standardized reasoning test, and their performance was measured as an indication of how talking affected their thinking. Thinking aloud greatly impaired the performance of the Asian Americans, while it did not hinder the performance of the European Americans. In a study observing students in the classroom, Jacqueline Duncan and Delroy Paulhus found that Asian Canadians were much less likely to speak out during class than European Canadians. Asian Canadians are also much more likely to describe themselves as shy and to report difficulties with tuto-

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rials where students are required to question and challenge the tutor (1998). Critical thinking is an element of the learning process in East Asian cultural contexts, but Daniel Pratt and colleagues suggest that it comes at the end of a four-stage process in which the student learns to memorize, understand, apply, and then to question or modify (Pratt, Kelly, and Wong 1999). When culturally constituted difference in expectations and approaches to learning go unmarked and all classroom activities foster the independent model of self, some students will be at a disadvantage in developing a student identity. These students might achieve less than they would otherwise.

Latino American Contexts The model of the person as interdependent with others and responsive to the social context is also pervasive in many Latino American contexts, although there is still relatively little empirical research comparing Latino American and European American students. Mexican Americans account for over 60 percent of people of Hispanic origin in the United States. In Mexican American contexts, as in Chinese American contexts, knowing one’s place in the social hierarchy is often emphasized; respect, deference, and obedience to elders is expected (Valdez 1996). Among peers, cooperation, solidarity, and similarity are more likely to be emphasized than difference or uniqueness (Wortham, Murillo, and Hamann 2002). Well-educated children are those who show respect, moral values, and, very significantly, loyalty to the family (Villenas 2002). It is the family and not the individual that is the foundational reality, and helping the family and extended family is expected (Diaz-Guerrero and Szalay 1991; Stanton-Salazar 1997). In a recent study, Mexican Americans were just as likely as European American students to describe themselves as independent, but they were decidedly more likely to describe themselves as interdependent and connected to family (Mesquita et al. 2006). They were also more likely to report that it is difficult to be happy if someone in their family is sad. The European American notion that growing up means becoming autonomous and separating from expectations and constraints of family is a peculiar idea among Mexican American students. Maintaining such interdependence in the many American schools that require and foster independence is an ongoing challenge and a source of cultural conflict for many Mexican American students, teachers, and parents (Denner and Guzman 2006). In Latino American contexts, warm and agreeable relations—a type of social harmony—among people in the family and in the world of work is a particularly valued end in itself (Triandis et al. 1984). In fact, good relations are often understood as a part of school and work settings, and not as separate from them. In one study, Mexican American and European American students viewed video clips of a tutoring session (Sanchez-Burks, Nisbett, and Ybarra

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2000). In one session, the tutor focused only on the task. In the second session, the tutor blended attention to the task with a focus on establishing a warm relationship with the student. The European American students were decidedly more likely than Mexican American students to evaluate the task-focused session as likely to be successful, and also more likely to believe that increasing the socioemotional focus of the tutoring session would render it less successful. In ways that are only beginning to be understood, the interdependence that characterizes Asian American and Latino American contexts is also the framework of learning and knowing (Irvine and York 2001; Nisbett 2003). Teachers serving large Latino-immigrant populations report a strong preference for such relational learning among their students (Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield, and Trumbull 1999). As an example of relational learning, Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and colleagues recount a visit to a wetlands park in which a docent asked a class of Latino students what they knew about hummingbirds. As the students enthusiastically began to tell stories about themselves and their families’ experiences with the birds, the docent became irritated and said, “No more stories.” He apparently expected the students to evaluate the hummingbird in terms of its properties (for example, quick, efficient, wing structure), and in so doing separate the bird from its social context and from their own experiences with the hummingbird (Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield, and Trumbull 1999). Expectations like these are common in European American contexts. Students from Latino American contexts, who emphasize relationships and interdependence among people and among objects and their contexts, may initially underperform on analytical tasks that require abstraction and decontextualization. When students are not responsive to the commitments of the independent model of self, teachers and other students might regard them negatively, potentially interfering with the development of a positive identity as a student.

American Indian Contexts Interdependence in conjunction with independence is also a defining element of many American Indian contexts (Fryberg and Markus 2003; Tharp 1988). As with Latino Americans, even though American Indian ways of life have been a staple of anthropological observations for more than seventy years, there is not yet a sufficient empirical base on which to make many generalizations about culturally derived ways of knowing and learning. American anthropologists used their observations of American Indians to make a powerful case that culture and ethnicity were important because they delineated different ways of life, some of which were strikingly different from mainstream European American ones. In American Indian contexts, caring and trusting relationships between teachers and students may be particularly critical to academic success

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(Deyhle and Swisher 1997). This may be especially true in American college settings where the expectation of the student is to leave home and strike out on his or her own (Bellah et al. 1985). As in Latino American contexts, the idea that adulthood requires independence is not common. Instead, becoming a responsible and competent person is typically achieved “in” the family or community context. As a result, students may expect to form a relational bond with their teachers as a prerequisite for feeling responsible and comfortable in the new context (Suina and Smolkin 1994), and social support is often a strong predictor of academic persistence (Gloria and Kurpius 2001). William Tierney found, for example, that American Indian students “get lonely, go home, and we won’t hear from them for a year or two.” However, students with university mentors were more likely to make decisions to persist in school (1992, 101).

African American Contexts African American contexts reflect a synthesis and a coevolution of both American and African ideas and practices, in the same way that Asian American contexts reflect some synthesis of American and Asian ideas and practices. Although there is a growing literature on African American families and parenting practices (Burlew et al. 1992; Hudley, Haight, and Miller 2003), which reveals an emphasis in African American contexts on giving back to the community and a moral imperative to help others, there has been much less direct examination of models of self and their implications for education and academic performance. African American contexts emphasize independence and self-expression (Jones 1999), but they also emphasize unity, egalitarianism, cooperative effort, and collective responsibility (Nobles 1991; Oyserman, Gant, and Ager 1995). Signithia Fordham suggests, in fact, that self-actualization in African American contexts is often directly tied to validation through others as well as to expressing qualities and characteristics that enhance the status of the group (1993). This type of interdependence may be a legacy of African notions of personhood or a continuing legacy of involuntary immigration, slavery, discrimination, and segregated living. James Jones theorizes that African American contexts also differ from European American contexts in their emphasis on language and narrative as ways to express and identify the self and to gain control and respect in environments that are constrained, hostile, or at best indifferent (1999). Improvisation, he suggests, is a prevalent feature of African American contexts in both sports and music. It signals a type of creativity that emphasizes expressiveness and invention and that occurs under time pressure. Other scholars (Majors and Billson 1992; Morgan, in press) describe the “cool pose” or a focus on “keeping it real” as additional culturally sanctioned ways of exerting control over value and meaning in contexts where one’s group is under-

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valued or not recognized. Such hypotheses are intriguing and deserve empirical investigation with respect to their consequences for developing an identity as a student and for academic performance.

Culturally Derived Differences Shape Students This brief review of some culturally derived differences among students provides examples of the multiple ways that ethnicity can shape students’ understanding of self and how the world works. One similarity across all four contexts is the awareness of the self as relatively interdependent with others. Most American classroom practices foster only the independent model of self, with an emphasis on individual autonomy, standing out, separation from family, uniqueness, control, choice, success and feeling good about the self. This model can disadvantage those students who arrive at school with a more interdependent sense of self and the holistic cognitive tendencies that often track this model (Tharp 1988; Kitayama, Duffy, and Uchida 2007). Students who do not respond to praise, who do not stand out, or who do not easily express themselves may often be ignored. In subtle and complex ways that must be further explored, many teaching practices and materials that rely on abstraction and require an analytic approach may not be particularly effective for all students. A great deal more research and classroom experimentation is required to understand how the middle class European American practices that currently undergird most schools can change so that they learn from, recognize, and accommodate practices that reflect other traditions (Riedel, chapter 5, this volume; Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume). Yet on one point the empirical picture is clear: ethnic-specific cultural ideas and practices mediate students’ experience at school; they cannot be left at the door when the student enters the classroom. What happens at school—how students are regarded by others—will influence whether they develop positive identities as valued and respected students. When teachers, students, and parents do not see and appreciate systematic culturally derived differences in how students may think about themselves, others, and the world, patterns of behavior that depart from what is assumed to be normal are likely to be stigmatized and cast as a problem. Students can feel discouraged and unwelcome at school. Particularly for students who do not have parents with college degrees who can buffer the negative effects of classroom experiences, the way that the people react to them at school is likely to have a deciding impact on whether or not students feel inclined toward school and will claim an identity as a student.

Imposed Status Differences A cartoon in the San Jose Mercury News depicts two American Indians with feathers and loincloths standing on shore at Plymouth Rock greeting two Pil-

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grims with tall hats and broad collars as they disembark from the Mayflower. One American Indian politely inquires of the musket-bearing Pilgrims, “Oh, by the way, you don’t happen to have your guest-worker cards with you by any chance?” (May 1, 2006). The cartoon’s imagined encounter between America’s “original” inhabitants and America’s “original” settlers takes immediate aim at an immigrant nation’s anxiety over current immigration from Mexico. Yet it also succeeds in underscoring the fact that America’s struggles with the recognition of difference and inclusion are long standing. The humor rests with rethinking the dominant American historical narrative and imagining a different arrangement of power and status among America’s ethnic groups. The cartoon also highlights the fact that America’s current ethnic and racial hierarchy is the result of a historically rooted process in which one group of people became the standard for what is good or normal, and systematically imposed this standard to define other groups of people not only as different but as inferior. Group differences that are associated with race in America involve a particular type of social constitution—what Laurence Thomas called downward social constitution (1992). Differences among students that can be classified as imposed status differences are very different from culturally derived differences. They are differences that result from the evaluations and actions of those outside the group and are not claimed by those within the group. Race, similar to culture, indexes a pattern of ideas and practices used to represent and structure the social world (Omi and Winant 1994). However, the term race is used whenever distinctive group characteristics, whatever their assumed source, are used to establish a hierarchy and to accord one group a higher status and another group a lower status (Fredrickson 2001). The differences marked by the term race derive not from valued and claimed differences in being and doing in the world, like culturally derived differences. Instead, these differences are tied to historical experience in which difference is imposed on one group of people by another, and that group is defined as the lesser or low-caste group (Ogbu 1985). This inequality is then institutionalized in policy and practice, and the people associated with this group are persistently treated as different. They are labeled as different both through this treatment and their reactions to this treatment. Imposed status differences might be imagined as group differences arrayed vertically, with the group that marks the differences assigning themselves the top rank and other groups to lower ranks. When a group is racialized, the struggle is not for recognition or appreciation of a particular set of ideas and practices that differ from those of the mainstream, or how to integrate their own ideas of what is good and true with those of the mainstream. Instead, it is primarily a struggle against being made different and less than equal. All groups in the minority are likely to experi-

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ence social and economic discrimination, stereotyping, and glass or bamboo ceilings. The difference between “ethnic” minority groups and “racial” minority groups rests with why they are assumed to be different, how and when they came to be different, and how extensive and thorough the practices are that maintain the difference. Many approaches to multiculturalism and programs concerned with pluralism and inclusion conflate ethnic and racial differences. Yet this distinction is important to classroom practices and educational policy. Differences in academic achievement and the divergent patterns of interest and activity that result from the historically cumulative disadvantage of unequal status should not be accepted, recognized, or celebrated as culturally derived and endorsed differences in ways of knowing, thinking, and learning. Instead, their sources should be identified as imposed status differences, and they should be addressed and countered in these terms. African Americans, for example, are not voluntary immigrants, and their history as a group includes not only extensive racially based exclusion and segregation, but it also includes slavery and a persistent denial of personhood, as well as the poverty, discrimination, and cumulative disadvantage that accompanied a lack of access to education and separation from the economic mainstream. Moreover, as a group, African Americans have been the recipients of a long and pervasive process of downward social constitution. Because of a given group identity, they have been exposed not only to some unwelcome evaluations, as can be the case for any minority group, but also to a continuous concert of negative representations, historical narratives, treatments, interactions, perceptions, expectations, and affective reactions that limit and devalue their status (Thomas 1992; Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002). These representations perpetuate the idea that African Americans are inferior—particularly intellectually inferior—and also that African American men and boys are to be feared. When imposed status differences are conflated with culturally derived differences, racialized groups are viewed only as ethnic groups. Differences in behavior—for example, in performance—are likely to be explained primarily in terms of cultural models, group norms, values, or practices, and not in terms of differences in educational opportunities, including the likelihood of attending inferior underfunded schools, and inadequately prepared teachers. As Michael Omi and Howard Winant note, the typical question is: “After all, Jews and Japanese Americans did well in inferior schools, so why can’t other groups? . . . It is the European immigrant analogy applied to all without reservation” (1994, 21). Despite the pervasive individual and institutionalized racism that Jewish and Japanese Americans have encountered, and still encounter in some settings, this racism is different from the experience of African Americans. It does not include the persisting expectation that they are incapable of doing what school is most

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about—that is, being a student, thinking, learning, and using one’s mind to succeed. For those associated with a racialized group, negotiating a positive identity as a student in many mainstream academic settings is a particularly challenging task. In the face of downward social constitution, much of the regard of those outside the in-group will devalue the person or limit potential with respect to intellectual or academic ability (Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002; Steele 1997). For example, countering the view that the task of achievement for African American students is no different from that of any other group, Theresa Perry contends that African American students face a distinctive, unrecognized dilemma (2003). African American students must answer questions such as, “How can I commit myself to do work that is predicated on a belief in the power of the mind, when African American intellectual inferiority is so much a part of the taken-for-granted notions of the larger society that individuals in and out of school, even good and well-intentioned people, individuals who purport to be acting on my behalf, routinely register doubts about my intellectual competence?” (2003, 4–5). The task of high achievement for African Americans, as well as for other racialized groups, is constantly challenging because they must always be on alert for and contend with diminishing assumptions and ascriptions tied to their group identity (Perry 2003; Steele 2003). Of course, students, in weaving an identity as a student, do not have to incorporate these downwardly constituting views. Students can be acutely aware of the views of others, but they need not mirror them; they can ignore them, resist them, and contest them (Crocker et al. 1994; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001). Still, in many situations the downwardly constituting views of others are persistently there and are a reality of life in many settings. These representations form a background against which people answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “What is possible for me?” (Markus and Nurius 1986). The views of others can have a wide range of consequences, and their targets must contend with them, even as they learn to actively and effectively avoid them (Du Bois 1903/1989). Over the last two decades, Claude Steele and colleagues (Steele, Spencer, and Aronson 2002; Steele 1997; Steele and Aronson 1995) have developed and validated the powerful theory of stereotype threat. The research undergirding this theory directly reveals how the views of others can have detrimental effects on students’ academic performance, even for those students who are very well prepared with good grades from good schools. The theory of stereotype threat suggests that in relevant academic situations, students who are associated with negatively stereotyped groups worry that they might “be judged or treated in terms of the stereotype or that they might do something that would inadvertently confirm it” (Steele, Spencer, and Aronson 2002, 389).

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In multiple experimental situations exploring stereotype threat theory, researchers find that the test performance of African American college students is in fact depressed by being negatively stereotyped. These studies compare black and white students matched for ability level. To invoke the stereotype, the experimenters mention to half the students before taking the test (a difficult section of the General Record Examinations) that the test is a measure of verbal ability. This instruction works to make the stereotype directly relevant to the student’s performance on the test. For the other half of the students, nothing is said about the test being diagnostic of ability; instead students are told that the experimenters are trying to determine how problems are solved. Black students perform significantly less well than whites when they understand that the test is diagnostic of their ability. Yet, there is no difference between black and white students in the “nondiagnostic” condition. Importantly, studies show that students do not need to believe the stereotype or to have internalized it themselves. The stereotype influences whether a person can maintain an identity as a competent student at that moment, which is a necessary element for achievement. When the threat is present, performance is depressed; when the threat is lifted from the situation, performance improves. Notably, the stereotypes associated with race and ethnicity do not have to be overtly negative to have a negative impact on identity and achievement as a student. A set of studies examining the impact of common representations of American Indians on the identities of American Indians found that being exposed to popular media images of Pocahontas or sports teams mascots such as Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team was associated with depressed self-esteem, depressed collective efficacy, and fewer achievement-related possible selves (Fryberg et al. 2007). Notably these media images were not typically regarded as negative, even by American Indians. Moreover, European American students exposed to these same stereotypic images of American Indians reported elevated self-esteem and more achievement-related possible selves (Fryberg et al. 2007). Apparently, however, these representations remind American Indian students that they are seen only in a limited range of ways, and are not recognized as students or as future professionals, such as teachers, lawyers, or doctors.

Reconciling Difference and Equality in the Classroom Nearly all parents and their students value education and believe it is linked to achievement. The picture from social science and education research is clear: those who achieve are those who develop effective identities as students, learners, and achievers. Identities develop from an intertwining of how students think and feel about themselves with their perceptions of how others

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react to them at school. Schools are arguably the most important source of others’ regard with respect to achievement. What students will select from their perceptions of others’ reactions—what they will emphasize, what they will ignore—cannot be precisely forecast. Yet if teachers and staff are intentional in valuing and learning about their students’ lived experience, and are deliberate in countering devaluing and limiting images and practices within the school, they can increase the likelihood that students will claim a student identity and that others will confer this identity on them. Promoting more positive student identities requires creating schools that are what Dorothy Steele and her colleagues call “identity safe” (Murphy, Steele, and Gross 2007; Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002; Steele et al. 2007; Steele 2003). This is a state in which both horizontal and vertical differences are recognized. Students are understood and appreciated for the various culturally derived models and perspectives they bring to school, and they are also protected from various race-linked representations, expectations, and reactions, which are limiting, devaluing, and alienating. Designing an identitysafe school environment requires attention to the potential for ethnic and racial differences—their sources, their consequences, and the practices by which they are maintained. Contemplating such measures can induce the frustration of the teacher quoted earlier, yet recent studies suggest that big improvements in achievement may accompany relatively small interventions. In one impressive set of studies (Cohen et al. 2006), black and white middle school students were randomly assigned to an intervention group or a control group. Students in the intervention group were asked to identify what mattered to them most (the choices included family, art, religion, athletics, and others), and then to write a paragraph explaining why. Those in the control group were asked to select something that didn’t matter to them and explain in a paragraph why it might matter to someone else. Geoffrey Cohen and colleagues suggested that the writing task helped foster a sense of identity and gave students an opportunity in the school setting to present who they were. In each year of the experiment, the black students who wrote about what was important to them scored better (about one-third of a letter grade) than those in the control group. No such effect was observed for the white students, who presumably felt relatively more at home at school. Summarizing across a large number of studies and theories, a number of generalizations can be made about what is necessary for understanding and accommodating difference and for fostering effective student identities.

Everybody’s Ethnic Most common school practices have been developed for and validated by students from mainstream or European American contexts. In multiple ways that are not always easy to see, these practices are not culture neutral, race

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neutral, or nonsubstantive; instead they reflect and foster mainstream understandings and perspectives. As Pierre Bourdieu explained, “An educational system that puts into practice an implicit pedagogic action requiring initial familiarity with the dominant culture, and which proceeds by imperceptible familiarization, offers information and training which can only be received and acquired by subjects supported by the systems of predispositions which is the condition for the success of the transmission and inculcation of the culture” (1970, 3). Students with middle class European American backgrounds have a clear advantage because the world of education and schooling is laid out according to blueprints that reflect European Americans’ values, assumptions, and ways of being. These students bring with them an independent model of self that is a reasonable fit for most classroom practices, which are designed to develop a self that is separate from others and in control of one’s own actions. They have a significant advantage in terms of cultural and, of course, linguistic capital. For students who are not white, race and ethnicity are an ever-present reality of social life, always salient in schooling practices even if they are never mentioned. More than 70 percent of teachers in American classrooms are white, middle class, and female (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education 1999). Many teach students whose lived experiences and perspectives, especially with respect to race and ethnicity, are very different from their own, but these differences are seldom made explicit. In fact, educators often worry that drawing attention to these differences would be, at best, divisive and, at worst, immoral. A useful exercise for educators, as well as for students, is to answer the question, “Who Am I?”, and then to share these answers with class members. Those associated with ethnic and racial minority groups will be much more likely to mention their ethnic and cultural groups than will European American students (Oyserman and Harrison 1998). European Americans most often describe themselves as autonomous individuals defined by personal attributes and seldom mention their race or ethnicity. Because the ideas and practices of their own ethnic group are built into the school and the larger society, they go unnoticed by those associated with the group (Alba 1990; Tuan 1998; Waters 1992). Such an exercise can be a window into the types of automatic advantages that a European American background confers for developing a student identity.

Defining Ethnicity and Race A critical first step in acknowledging how race and ethnicity shape identity is to communicate new evidence-based definitions of culture, ethnicity, and race. Many educators worry about discussing race because they are concerned that even acknowledging ethnicity is to be a racist or to engage in

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stereotyping. Such concerns are tied to the pervasive view that race and ethnicity are essences or attributes of people that are internal, personal, or biologically based (Adams and Markus 2004; Gutierrez and Rogoff 2003; Omi and Winant 1994). The problem with attending to differences in the classroom rests with what it is that people assume to be the source of these differences. When race and ethnicity are understood as patterns of ideas and practices that people engage in rather than essences or attributes of people, and race is understood as a set of historically derived understandings that have been used to structure social and power relations among people rather than something fixed in the person, it should be easier to attend to cultural and racial differences and how they influence behavior. Moreover, teachers should now acknowledge to all students, not only minority students, that despite the ideology of the American Dream, the playing field is not yet level or fair. They should explain that there exists an often antagonistic relationship between students of color and society and should explain why (Ladson-Billings 2006). These lessons require teaching or reteaching American history and the realization that America’s narrative of itself as an inclusive immigrant nation developed alongside a powerful set of exclusions (Foner 1998; Adams 2008). Such lessons require specific and developmentally appropriate conversations about race and ethnicity and how they work, as well as an understanding that forging positive and valued identities is an intergroup project.

Creating Diverse Cultures of Learning and Institutionalizing High Expectations A variety of programs and interventions reveal that students’ achievement and dropout rates are reduced when teachers demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and respect for students’ contexts and background, and when they find ways to let students and others in their environments see them as students, learners, or achievers (Garrison-Wade and Lewis 2004; Steele 1999; Steele et al. 2007). For example, a recent comprehensive study of elementary school classrooms found that a trio of factors termed identity safety practices—including the use of diversity as a resource (rather than a color-blind approach), expressing high expectancies for all students, and cultivating positive student-teacher relationships—was linked to higher standardized test performance, greater liking for school, and a sense of personal identity safety in the classroom (Steele et al. 2007). Experimental studies with college students find that performance among minority students can be improved by explicitly removing stereotype threat from classroom situations and by linking ethnicity with valued classroom membership and academic achievement (Cohen et al. 2006; Davies, Spencer,

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and Steele 2005; Walton and Cohen 2007). This research suggests that schools can work against identity threat by promoting cross-group friendships, fostering high expectations for success, and providing success-affirming role models. Such findings suggest that schools can intentionally design contexts that help students master the cultural capital, skills, and strategies they need to become achievers and maintain identities as achievers. Theresa Perry notes that such contexts should be constructed to be directly relevant to the students, drawing from the “cultural formations” of the students and their communities (2003). An important first step in displaying this respect and understanding is to incorporate diverse materials that reflect traditionally underrepresented ethnic and racial groups. In a society where being young and black (or Latino, Filipino, or American Indian) and an academic achiever are almost never linked, the school’s role is particularly powerful and significant (Perry, Steele, and Hilliard 2003). Far from being color-blind and mute, schools should provide evidence, ideas, and images of minority achievement. While not every ethnic group can be used in examples or included in discussions or assignments, teachers can convey the idea that there are a variety of ways to think about the self, about others, and about the world, and that these ways deserve recognition and respect. Teachers can encourage students to collaborate across group differences, to be slow to judge, and to ask questions about each other’s background and experiences to expand their knowledge and awareness of differences in lived experience (Aronson 2003; Geertz 2001; Gurin et al. 2007). The take-away point is that different social locations in the world (for example, being in the majority or minority) are associated with different experiences and understandings which can give rise to significant differences in perspective and ways of being in the world. In modeling and communicating this idea, teachers can expand the range of their teaching practices. For example, they can focus on dialogue and conversation as well as lecture; they can focus on collaborative problem solving as well as on individual instruction. While acknowledging the potential for different approaches to knowing and learning, it is critical not to assume that a particular approach or model will be appropriate for understanding a particular student without knowledge of a student’s background, interests, and experience. A student with a Latino name may be third- or fourth-generation Latino American and may have very little contact with ideas and practices commonly associated with Latino contexts. While it is likely that race will be a significant factor in student identity in a racially stratified society, this is not universally the case. Without pigeonholing students and expecting that certain students will behave in certain ways, teachers can, however, engage students in their curricular planning and become aware of different models so that they can experiment when usual approaches do not seem to be working.

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Countering Inequality-Maintaining Practices Schools use a variety of ideas and practices that systematically divide and rank students. Most of these are so pervasive and fully institutionalized that they can be difficult to see. One powerful mechanism of downward social constitution comes with the explanations that are commonly given for student underachievement. Public and private conversations about the performance gap are now part of daily life. When students do not do well in school, the typical question is whether these students lack the capacity to do well, whether they are unwilling to work, or both. Given the pervasive independent model of the self that locates the sources of action in the self, as well as notions of minority-group intellectual inferiority that are still very prevalent in America (Tormala and Deaux 2006; Perry 2003), these seem to be the right questions to ask. Yet the most obvious and empirically well-supported explanation for the performance gap is not a capacity gap, but instead a wide and growing opportunity gap (Krysan and Lewis 2005). Based on readily available data, there are questions that should be asked but seldom are: do underperforming students have equal opportunities to identify as learners and to perform and achieve? Do they have equally high-quality schools, course materials, and teachers with equally high expectations for their success? Are they exposed to equally positive role models and other self-relevant representations of achievement? Are their school settings equally welcoming and do they promote equally positive recognition and regard from others? Minority students who have succeeded are often used as examples to support the claim that the only barrier to fulfilling the American Dream is a lack of individual motivation or effort. The narrative of the single individual succeeding against the odds fits the culturally prevalent independent model of self very well. Thus the details of the positive supportive scaffolding that is often somewhere present in the lives of these exemplary cases are seldom emphasized (Plaut and Markus 2005). A major responsibility of an academic setting that hopes to foster effective student identities is to intervene and help students learn to intervene in the many everyday marginalizing conversations that simply assume that some students are less able, are lazy, or are uncaring. Such conversations ignore the wide variety of factors that are potentially at play in underperformance. Gloria Ladson-Billings summarizes the problem with the usual framing of underperformance through a story about a grandmother in the rural South who was perplexed by the discussion of why students were underperforming (Ladson-Billings 1994). The grandmother explained that in her experience of many years of farming, when the corn didn’t grow, no one asked what was wrong with the corn. A second powerful mechanism of downward social constitution is academic tracking. If American society was not organized by race and ethnicity,

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and there were no barriers to upward mobility linked to race and ethnicity, one would expect that students from all races and ethnicities would be represented proportionally in all categories of achievement from lowest to highest. Yet, in much of the country, students are tracked according to their level of achievement from their kindergarten days, and almost everywhere, a clear racial divide is evident. Students in the high-performing groups—the students called “smart” and “motivated”—are likely to be white and, in some places, Asian, and to have parents who went to college. Students in low-performing groups—the students “who don’t care about school or about their futures”—are more likely to be black and Latino students. As Laurie Olsen says, it takes amazing denial not to see that “the skin color and language background of the student is closely correlated with the chances of being among those who do cross the stage [to graduate]” (1997, 187). Not being surprised by this correlation means that people have convinced themselves that differences in capacity, effort, or in the individual choices that students make must be at work in this relationship. The discourse of differential capacity then fuels the practice of tracking, and the practice of tracking further promotes the discourse of differential capacity. Challenging the practice and value of tracking, especially in the early grades before years of tracking have indeed created differential educational experiences for students, is critical to changing the patterns of others’ regard that are necessary for an effective student identity. When a strong correlation exists between the level of the course and the race or ethnicity of its students, teachers may find themselves relying on race and ethnicity to make decisions about class assignments. At the high school level, Jeannie Oakes and Gretchen Guiton find, for example, that black and Latino students who have similar grades and test scores to white students are less likely to be tracked into the Advanced Placement classes that are linked to college admissions (1995). Tracking works directly against the intent to produce an environment that uncouples the link between minority status and underachievement. Many studies now suggest that de-tracking does not harm the students who are doing well and helps those who doing less well (Darling-Hammond 2004; Gorski and EdChange.org 1995-2006). In the event that some grouping is unavoidable, efforts should be made to create countervailing groups that do not confound minority status with academic skills or achievement (Markus, Steele, and Steele 2002).

Conclusion: Equality Requires Attention to Difference Despite high expectations for achievement, the ethnic and racial education gap in America is dramatic and growing. The gap has multiple complex sources, and closing it will require sustained individual and collective effort

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amid distracting polemical struggles over who is at fault and who is responsible. Sustained research from many fields over several decades now supports the conclusion that one necessary condition for school achievement is identity as a student. Such an identity organizes and sustains achievement-related behavior. An identity as a student is not, however, solely an individual phenomenon; it is intimately bound up with the reactions of others in the school setting. If a student feels like those described in the earlier quotation, “we just don’t matter,” the chances of identifying as a student are low. To claim identities as students, young people must feel that they matter, and that they are recognized, understood, and included. Many mainstream or majority students attend schools where others—students, teachers, and administrators—share and foster their image of themselves as students. The identity as a student seems to develop as a natural consequence of going to school and wanting to achieve. Other students however, because of their ethnicity or race, will find that their own images of themselves as students are not shared and fostered, and that the regard of others is limiting or devaluing. Public schools are the main vehicle for the education that is the basis of equal opportunity in America. In a society where race and ethnicity structure experience, schools have a special responsibility not to be blind, but instead to see the differences among young people that can significantly affect their chances of developing identities as students. Such recognition requires revealing and accommodating horizontal differences (that is, culturally derived differences in ways of teaching and learning), while simultaneously revealing and countering vertical differences (that is, historically imposed and maintained status differences among students). The enormous societal challenge of transforming schools cannot be underestimated. Yet when a community of educators shares a commitment to the importance of equal educational opportunity for students, many of the practices for giving recognition, for fostering a sense of belongingness, and for countering exclusion and inequality are not difficult to master or to implement. Small interventions can produce large effects. Most young people want to be students—to go to school and to become educated. A focus on identity and how to create spaces that foster a student identity is one promising route to providing the education necessary for pursuing the American Dream in a multiethnic, multiracial democracy.

References Adams, Glen, editor. 2008. Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination. Washington: American Psychological Association. Adams, Glen, and Hazel Rose Markus. 2004. “Toward a Conception of Culture Suitable for a Social Psychology of Culture.” In The Psychological Foundations of Culture, edited by Mark Schaller and Christian S. Crandall. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Alba, Richard. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. 1999. Teacher Education Pipeline IV: Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education. Washington: AACTE. Aronson, Elliot. 2003. The Social Animal. London: Worth Publishing. Asch, Solomon E. 1952. Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Augoustinos, Martha. 1998. “Social Representations and Ideology: Toward the Study of Ideological Representations.” In The Psychology of the Social, edited by Uwe Flick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bandura, Albert. 1997. Self-Efficacy. New York: W. H. Freeman. Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Blau, Judith R. 2003. Race in the Schools: Perpetuating White Dominance? Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner Publishers. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1970. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Translated by Richard Nice. London: Sage Publications. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Burlew, Ann Kathleen, W. Curtis Banks, Harriette Pipes McAdoo, and Daudi Ajani Azibo, editors. 1992. African American Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publishing. Carter, Prudence L. 2005. Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chao, Ruth K. 1993. East and West Concepts of the Self Reflected in Mothers’ Reports of Their Child Rearing. Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California. Cohen, Geoffrey L., Julio Garcia, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master. 2006. “Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention.” Science 313(5791): 1307–10. Crocker, Jennifer, Riia Luhtanen, Bruce Blaine, and Stephanie Broadmax. 1994. “Collective Self-Esteem and Psychological Well-Being Among White, Black, and Asian College Students.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20(5): 503–13. Darling-Hammond, Linda. 2004. “What Happens to a Dream Deferred? The Continuing Quest for Equal Educational Opportunity.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks. 2nd ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Davies, Paul G., Steven Spencer, and Claude M. Steele. 2005. “Clearing the Air: Identity Safety Moderates the Effects of Stereotype Threat on Women’s Leadership Aspirations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88(2): 276–87. Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. 1985. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Springer Verlag. Denner, Jill, and Bianca Guzman. 2006. Latina Girls: Voices of Adolescent Strength in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Deyhle, Donna, and Karen Swisher. 1997. “Research in American Indian and Alaskan Native Education: From Assimilation to Self-Determination.” Review of Research in Education 22(2): 113–94.

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Diaz-Guerrero, Rogelio, and Lorand B. Szalay. 1991. Understanding Mexicans and Americans: Cultural Perspectives in Conflict. New York: Springer Verlag. Dodd, Susan Leverett, and Mile Anthony Irving. 2006. “Incorporation of Multiculturalism into Art Education.” In White Teachers/Diverse Classrooms: A Guide to Building Inclusive Schools, Promoting High Expectations, and Eliminating Racism, edited by Julie Landsman and Chance W. Lewis. Sterling, Va.: Stylus Publishing. Downey, Geraldine, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, and Celina M. Chatman, editors. 2005. Navigating the Future: Social Identity, Coping, and Life Tasks. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903/1989. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books. Duncan, Jacqueline, and Delroy L. Paulhus. 1998. “Varieties of Shyness in Asianand European-Canadians.” Paper presented at the 106th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, August 17, 1998, San Francisco, Calif. Eccles, Jacquelynne S., and Allan Wigfield. 2002. “Motivational Beliefs, Values and Goals.” Annual Review of Psychology 53(1): 109–32. Edley, Christopher, Jr. 2002. “Education Reform in Context: Research, Politics, and Civil Rights.” In Achieving High Educational Standards for All: Conference Summary. Washington: National Academies Press. Fiske, Alan Page, Shinobu Kitayama, Hazel Rose Markus, and Richard E. Nisbett. 1998. “The Cultural Matrix of Social Psychology.” In Vol. 2 of Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Foley, Douglas and Kirby Moss. 2000. “Studying American Cultural Diversity: Some Non-Essentializing Perspectives.” In Studying Cultural Diversity in America, edited by Ida Susser. London: Blackwell Publishing. Foley, Douglas, Bradley A. Levinson, and Janise Hurtig. 2000–2001. “Anthropology Goes Inside: The New Educational Ethnography of Ethnicity and Gender.” Review of Research in Education 25: 37–98. Foner, Eric. 1998. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Fordham, Signithia. 1993. “Those Loud Black Girls”: (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender “Passing” in the Academy. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 24(1): 3–32. Fredrickson, George M. 2001. “Models of American Ethnic Relations: Hierarchy, Assimilation, and Pluralism.” In Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict, edited by Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Fryberg, Stephanie, and Hazel Rose Markus. 2003. “On Being American Indian: Current and Possible Selves.” Self and Identity 2(4): 325. ———. 2007. “Models of Education in American Indian, Asian American, and European American Cultural Contexts.” Social Psychology of Education 10(2): 213–46. Fryberg, Stephanie A., Hazel Rose Markus, Daphna Oyserman, and Joseph M. Stone. 2007. Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots. Garrison-Wade, Dorothy F., and Chance W. Lewis. 2004. “Affirmative Action: History and Analysis.” Journal of College Admission 184: 23–26.

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Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books. ———. 2001. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Gloria, Alberta M., and Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius. 2001. “Influences of SelfBeliefs, Social Support, and Comfort in the University Environment on the Academic Nonpersistence Decisions of American Indian Undergraduates.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 7(1): 88–102. Gorski, Paul, and EdChange.org. 1995–2006. Teacher’s Corner of EdChange’s Multicultural Pavilion. “Working Definition”. Accessed December 14, 2007, at http:// www.edchange.org/multicultural/teachers.html. Greenfield, Patricia M., and Rodney R. Cocking. 1994. Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Guay, Frederic, Herbert W. Marsh, and Michel Boivin. 2003. “Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement: Developmental Perspectives on Their Causal Ordering.” Journal of Educational Psychology 95(1): 124–36. Guinier, Lani. 2000. “Confirmative Action.” Law and Social Inquiry 25(2): 565–83. Gurin, Patricia, Gerald Gurin, John Matlock, and Katrina Wade-Golden. 2007. “Sense of Community Values Among Racial-Ethnic Groups: An Opportunity for a New Conception of Integration.” In Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination, edited by Glen Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, Christian S. Crandall, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman. Washington: American Psychological Association. Gutierrez, Kris D., and Barbara Rogoff. 2003. “Cultural Ways of Learning: Individual Traits or Repertories of Practice.” Educational Researcher 32(5): 19–25. Hall, Kathleen. 2005. “Science, Globalization, and Educational Governance: The Political Rationalities of the New Managerialism.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 12(1): 153–82. Hochschild, Jennifer L. 1995. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Holland, Dorothy, and Naomi Quinn, editors. 1987. Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hudley, Edith V. P., Wendy L. Haight, and Peggy J. Miller. 2003. “Raise Up a Child”: Human Development in an African-American Family. Chicago, Ill.: Lyceum Books. Hwang, Kwang-Kuo. 1999. “Fillial Piety and Loyalty: Two Types of Social Identification in Confucianism.” Theoretical and Methodological Advances in Social Psychology. Special issue, Asian Journal of Social Psychology 2(1): 163–83. Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan, and Darlene E. York. 2001. “Learning Styles and Culturally Diverse Students: A Literature Review.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Educations, edited by James A. Banks. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Iyengar, Sheena S., and Mark R. Lepper. 1999. “Rethinking the Value of Choice: A Cultural Perspective on Intrinsic Motivation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76(3): 349–66. Jones, James M. 1999. “Cultural Racism: The Intersection of Race and Culture in Intergroup Conflict.” In Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict, edited by Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Jordan, Cathie. 1985. “Translating Culture: From Ethnographic Information to Educational Program.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 16(2): 105–23. Kendall, Frances E. 1983. Diversity in the Classroom: A Multicultural Approach to the Education of Young Children. New York: Teachers College Press. Kim, Heejung S. 2002. “We Talk, Therefore We Think? A Cultural Analysis of the Effect of Talking on Thinking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83(4): 828–42. Kitayama, Shinobu, Sean Duffy, and Yukiko Uchida. 2007. “Self as Cultural Mode of Being.” In Handbook of Cultural Psychology, edited by Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen. New York: Guilford Press. Kroeber, A. L., and Clyde Kluckhohn. 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Vintage Books. Krysan, Maria, and Amanda Lewis. 2005. “The United States Today: Racial Discrimination Is Alive and Well.” Challenge 48(3): 34–49. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1994. The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of AfricanAmerican Children. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. ———. 2006. “Yes, But How Do We Do It? Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” In White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms: A Guide to Building Inclusive Schools, Promoting High Expectations, and Eliminating Racism, edited by Julie Landsman and Chance W. Lewis. Sterling, Va.: Stylus Publishing. Landsman, Julie, and Chance W. Lewis. 2006. White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms: A Guide to Building Inclusive Schools, Promoting High Expectations, and Eliminating Racism. Sterling, Va.: Stylus Publishing. Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Levinson, Bradley. 2002. “Foreword”. In Education in the New Latino Diaspora, edited by Stanton Wortham, Enrique G. Murillo Jr., & Edmund T. Hamann. Westport, Conn.: Ablex Publishing. Levinson, Bradley, and Dorothy Holland. 1996. “The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: An Introduction.” In The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, edited by B. Levinson, Douglas Foley, and Dorothy Holland. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Lewis, Amanda E. 2003. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Majors, Richard, and Janet Mancini Billson. 1992. Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America. New York: Simon & Schuster. Markus, Hazel Rose, and Shinobu Kitayama. 1991. “Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation.” Psychological Review 98(2): 224–53. Markus, Hazel Rose, and Paula Nurius. 1986. “Possible Selves.” American Psychologist 41(9): 954–69. Markus, Hazel Rose, Shinobu Kitayama, and Rachel J. Heiman. 1997. “Culture and ‘Basic’ Psychological Principles.” In Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, edited by E. Tory Higgins and Arie W. Kruglanski. New York: Guilford Press. Markus, Hazel Rose, Claude M. Steele, and Dorothy M. Steele. 2002. “Colorblind-

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ness as a Barrier to Inclusion: Assimilation and Nonimmigrant Minorities.” Daedalus 129(4): 233–59. Marsh, Herbert W. 1990. “Casual Ordering of Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement: A Multiwave, Longitudinal Panel Analysis.” Journal of Educational Psychology 82(4): 646–56. Marsh, Herbert W., Ulrich Trautwein, Oliver Ludke, Olaf Koller, and Jrgen Baumert. 2005. “Academic Self-Concept, Interest, Grades, and Standardized Test Scores: Reciprocal Effects Models of Casual Ordering.” Child Development 76(2): 397–416. Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1992. “Racial Identity and the Spatial Assimilation of Mexicans in the United States.” Social Science Research 21(3): 235–60. McIntosh, Peggy. 1990. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Knapsack.” Independent School, 49(2): 31–36. Mesquita, Batja, Krishna Savani, David Albert, Hilda Fernandez de Ortega, and Mayumi Karasawa. 2006. “Beyond the Dichotomy of Cultures: Emotions in Mexican, Japanese, and European American Contexts.” Unpublished manuscript. K. U. Leuven, Belgium. Michaels, Walter Benn. 2007. How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Morgan, Marcyliena. In press. The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Moses, Michele S. 2002. Embracing Race: Why We Need Race-Conscious Education Policy. New York: Teachers College Press. Murphy, Mary C., Claude M. Steele, and James J. Gross. 2007. “Signaling Threat: How Situational Cues Affect Women in Math, Science, and Engineering Settings.” Psychological Science, 18(10): 879–85 Nelson-Barber, Sharon. 1999. “A Better Education for Every Child: The Dilemma for Teachers of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students.” In Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in Standards-Based Reform: A Report on McREL’s Diversity Roundtable I. Aurora, Colo.: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. New American Media. 2006, August 23. “Great Expectations: Multilingual Poll of Latino, Asian, and African American Parents Reveals High Aspirations for Children—From Preschool to College”. Accessed December 14, 2007, at http:// news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_alt_category.html?category_id=95. Nisbett, Richard E. 2003. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . And Why. New York: Free Press. Nobles, Wade W. 1991. “African Philosophy: Foundations of Black Psychology.” In Black Psychology, edited by Reginald Jones. 3rd ed. Hampton, Va.: Cobb and Henry. Oakes, Jeannie, and Gretchen Guiton. 1995. “Matchmaking: The Dynamics of High School Tracking Decisions.” American Educational Research Journal 32(1): 3–33. Oakes, Jeannie, Karen Hunter Quartz, Steve Ryan, and Martin Lipton. 2000. Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in School Reform. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

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Ogbu, John U. 1985. “A Cultural Ecology of Competence Among Inner-City Blacks.” In Beginnings: The Social and Affective Development of Black Children, edited by Margaret B. Spencer, Geraldine K. Brookins, and Walter Recharde Allen. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Oliver, Melvin L., and Thomas M. Shapiro. 1997. Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge. Olsen, Laurie. 1997. Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. New York: New Press. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Orfield, Gary. 2004. Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press. Oyserman, Daphna, and Kathy Harrison. 1998. “Implications of Cultural Context: African American Identity and Possible Selves.” In Prejudice: The Target’s Perspective, edited by Janet K. Swim and Charles Stangor. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press. Oyserman, Daphna, Larry Grant, and Joel Ager. 1995. “A Socially Contextualized Model of African American Identity: Possible Selves and School Persistence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69(6): 1216–32. Perry, Theresa. 2003. “Up from the Parched Earth: Toward a Theory of African American Achievement.” In Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students, edited by Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, and Asa Hilliard III. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. Perry, Theresa, Claude Steele, and Asa Hilliard. 2003. Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students. Boston: Beacon Press. Plaut, Victoria C. 2002. “Cultural Models of Diversity: The Psychology of Difference and Inclusion.” In Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, edited by Richard Shweder, Martha Minow, and Hazel Rose Markus. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Plaut, Victoria, and Hazel Markus. 2005. “The ‘Inside’ Story: A Cultural-Historical Analysis of How to Be Smart and Motivated, American Style.” In Handbook of Culture and Motivation, edited by Andrew Eliot and Carol Dweck. New York: Guilford Press. Pratt, Daniel D., Mavis Kelly, and Winnie S. S. Wong. 1999. “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Effective Teaching’ in Hong Kong: Towards a Culturally Sensitive Evaluation of Teaching.” International Journal of Lifelong Education 18(4): 241–58. Resnick, Lauren B. 1994. “Situated Rationalism: Biological and Social Preparation for Learning.” In Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture, edited by Lawrence A. Hirschfeld and Susan A. Gelman. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rothstein-Fisch, Carrie, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Elise Trumbull. 1999. “Bridging Cultures with Classroom Strategies: Understanding Individualism-Collectivism.” Educational Leadership 56(7): 64–67. Sanchez-Burks, Jeffrey, Richard E. Nisbett, and Oscar Ybarra. 2000. “Cultural Styles, Relationship Schemas, and Prejudice Against Out-Groups.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(2): 174–89.

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Tierney, William G. 1992. “An Anthropological Analysis of Student Participation in College.” The Journal of Higher Education 63(6): 603–18. Thomas, Laurence. 1992. “Moral Deference.” Philosophical Forum 24(1–3): 233–50. Thomas, William I. 1923. The Unadjusted Girl. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company. Tomasello, Michael. 2001. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Tormala, Teceta Thomas, and Kay Deaux. 2006. “Black Immigrants to the United States: Confronting and Constructing Ethnicity and Race.” In Cultural Psychology of Immigrants, edited by Ramaswami Mahalingam. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Triandis, Harry C. 1995. Individualism and Collectivism. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Triandis, Harry C., Gerardo Marin, Judith Lisansky, and Hector Betancourt. 1984. “Simpatia as a Cultural Script of Hispanics.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47(6): 1363–75. Tsai, Annie Y. 2005. “Equality or Propriety: A Cultural Models Approach to Understanding Social Hierarchy.” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University. Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Tweed, Roger G., and Darrin R. Lehman. 2002. “Learning Considered Within a Cultural Context: Confucian and Socratic Approaches.” American Psychologist 57(2): 89–99. Valdez, Guadalupe. 1996. Con Respecto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Valentine, Jeffrey C., David L. DuBois, and Harris Cooper. 2004. “The Relations Between Self-Beliefs and Academic Achievement: A Systematic Review.” Educational Psychologist 39(2): 111–33. Villenas, Sofia. 2002. “Reinventing Educación in New Latino Communities: Pedagogies of Change and Continuity in North Carolina.” In Education in the New Latino Diaspora, edited by Stanton Wortham, Enrique G. Murillo Jr., and Edmund T. Hamann. Westport, Conn.: Ablex Publishing. Walton, Gregory M., and Geoffrey L. Cohen. 2007. “A Question of Belonging: Race, Social Fit, and Achievement.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1): 82–96. Waters, Harry. 1992. “Race, Culture and Interpersonal Conflict.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 16(4): 437–54. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1994. “Emotion, Language, and Cultural Scripts.” In Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence, edited by Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Markus. Washington: American Psychological Association. Wortham, Stanton. 2004. “The Interdependence of Social Identification and Learning.” American Educational Research Journal 41(3): 715–50. Wortham, Stanton, Enrique G. Murillo, Jr., and Edmund T. Hamann, editors. 2002. Education in the New Latino Diaspora. Westport, Conn.: Ablex Publishing.

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Zhou, Min. 2006. “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families in the United States.” In Cultural Psychology of Immigrants, edited by Ramaswami Mahalingam. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zirkel, Sabrina. 2007. “Creating More Effective Multiethnic Schools and Classrooms.” Review of Educational Research.

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4 CONTESTED TERRAIN: VISIONS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN AN AMERICAN TOWN Austin Sarat The level of diversity that adults are asked to deal with in this building on a day to day basis, if I had to deal with twenty-five years ago as a beginning teacher, I never would have figured it out. Kids with IEPs, kids with ADD, kids with borderline Autism, kids with Asperger’s, black kids, poor kids, Cambodian kids, and all the kids who don’t fall into those categories, who may have their own distinctive version of struggle, they all show up on the same day within the same classroom space . . . The level of diversity routinely presented to teachers today, in this place, you need a cape and an “S” on your chest in order to be able to figure it out. —Administrator in the Amherst schools, Fall, 2005 If we are ever going to really be a multicultural school system, and we want to be, we are going to have to reinvent public schooling from the bottom-up. That’s our job. —Member of the Amherst-Pelham School Committee, Spring, 2006 I think that the thing that we miss when we have these conversations is what does multiculturalism really mean, and does multiculturalism really mean that it’s okay to dress like a gangster and talk like a gangster and get Cs like the rednecks or Bs like the brainiacs? . . . To me it’s more broadening the curriculum to make sure its not just white guys, that its not just taking you know any old person who wrote something, just say, “Well we got to find some black poet,” but showing that there is a whole world out there of literature and making sure that when you are talking about inventions it’s not just George Washington Carver and then all white guys and you know looking, rebalancing all of that stuff and different things that different cultures have brought to the world that we are all experiencing and that we all appreciate, just not realizing where it came from. And so that to me it is more of the core to multiculturalism that if people can then see themselves more in what they are being taught then they can engage more in the curriculum and are more likely to succeed. —Member of the Amherst-Pelham School Committee, Winter, 2005

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I

live in a place whose liberal tendencies have earned it various nicknames. For example, it has been called “The People’s Republic of Amherst” and “Amherst, An Island Off the Coast of America.” Amherst, Massachusetts, is a classic college town of about thirty-five thousand residents situated at the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains about one hundred miles west of Boston. It is home to two colleges and the University of Massachusetts, as well as a substantial population of well-educated professionals. On the town common, directly in front of the town hall, fly both the American flag and the flag of the United Nations. And, as some of its residents proudly note, our town has its own foreign policy as well as its own view of what the federal government should be doing on a range of domestic issues (Amherst Town Meeting 2004).1 That the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District has made an explicit, district-wide commitment to multicultural education is thus quite consonant with the character and temperament of the community (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006a). Indeed, several years ago an article in The Boston Globe observed that “on the multiculturalism meter [Amherst] is close to overheating” (Daley 1999, 32). The district serves more than four thousand students in five elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006a). The diversity of its student population is reflected in the high school, where 73 percent of the students are Caucasian, 10 percent are African American, 9 percent are Asian, 7 percent are Hispanic, and 1 percent are Native American (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006b). While other communities argue about the necessity or virtue of multiculturalism in education (Sowell 2004; Feinberg 1996), Amherst is officially committed to it. While other communities do no more than make ad hoc accommodations to newly arrived cultural groups against a background of resentment directed toward them (Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume), Amherst developed a comprehensive policy of accommodation designed to transform the way its schools operate. While other communities believe there is a tradeoff between multiculturalism and educational excellence (Webster 1997; Ryan 1993; Asante and Ravitch 1991), Amherst’s formal policies acknowledge no such trade-off. As the district’s statement of mission and goals says, We should maintain the focus of the educational program on individual development and achievement, but at the same time we must be attentive to the impact of instruction and school practices upon racial, ethnic, religious and gender groups. Our goals require a school environment in which all students feel they are respected and fairly treated, one in which they are encouraged to take full advantage of educational opportunities the schools offer. (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006a)

In this statement, the school district seems to acknowledge the tension that this volume demonstrates is central in American schools today—namely, the

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tension “between promoting individual development and enhancing the ability of particular groups to pass on their traditions.” The district seems to be trying to have it both ways: tilting heavily toward multiculturalism, embracing its language of respect and fairness, but also highlighting the district’s focus on individual achievement. Elsewhere, however, the official policies of the district seem less ambivalent. Thus Amherst’s commitment to multiculturalism is signified and guided by the district’s Becoming a Multicultural School System (BAMSS) initiative. Several years ago the school board issued the following statement explaining the background and necessity of this initiative: Diversity is strength because it challenges every student, every teacher, and every person in the school system to understand, respect and value the differences among us. In the four towns that comprise the school district, more than thirty languages are spoken in the homes of our students and nearly 30% of the entire student body belongs to the ALANA (African American, Latino, Asian and Native American) population. In every elementary-school classroom there is at least one student who is learning English as a new language— from the nearly 300 students who receive instruction in English as a Second Language, to those enrolled in Transitional Bilingual Educational programs, which teach academic subjects in the native language until the ability to learn English is acquired. Creating a diverse school community that reflects the community at large includes addressing racism and other forms of discrimination in the classroom to help students understand the nature and complexity of a multicultural society. But diversity isn’t something that can be forgotten when the bell rings at the end of the school day. All of our schools are devoted to promoting equity in all aspects of education, inside the classroom and out. The commitment to equity is demonstrated by having set specific goals for Becoming a Multicultural School System (BAMSS). These explicit goals call for equity in hiring, establishment of a multicultural curriculum, and attention to the needs of each and every student. (Amherst Regional Public Schools, “A Commitment to Equity”)

In addition, the school district’s mission statement commits the public schools to a particular vision of multiculturalism: The mission of our schools is to provide all students with a high quality education that enables them to be contributing members of a multiethnic, multicultural, pluralistic society. We seek to create an environment that achieves equity for all students and ensures that each student is a successful learner, is fully respected, and learns to respect others.2

The district has its own distinctive understanding of what multiculturalism entails, which combines what Peter McLaren (1995) labels “critical multiculturalism” with what he calls a “left-liberal” variety. While critical multi-

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culturalism envisions a “restructuring of the social order through a radical approach to schooling,” left-liberal multiculturalism “emphasizes cultural differences to the point of exoticism” (Ladson-Billings 2003, 54).3 The district says, Cultural groups usually are thought of as ethnic, religious and, with less clarity of definition, racial groups that share common ways of living which are transmitted from generation to generation. In addition to valuing cultural diversity, we are also concerned with the role we can play as educators in reducing prejudice and discrimination within our society. While racism is perhaps its most pervasive and destructive form, discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and handicap is equally harmful. (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2002)4

The depth of the district’s commitment to multiculturalism is signaled by the fact that every applicant for a position in the schools must complete a BAMSS statement as part of the application for employment (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006c). Below are the instructions for applicants. Our district is committed to “Becoming a Multicultural School System”. We work to provide all students with an education that enables them to be contributing members of a multiethnic, multicultural society. We strive to ensure that our community of students, families and staff are learning, treated equitably, and share the job of creating a caring environment. Please describe any personal background, training, work, or other experience that you feel would help us in achieving this goal.

At the level of official policy, these statements of mission and goals suggest that multiculturalism is hegemonic in the Amherst schools. Thus, Gus Sayer, the former superintendent of schools, commenting on the origins of BAMSS, explained that, When I was hired as superintendent . . . the School Committee identified for me dealing with issues of cultural diversity in our community as one of the large challenges the new superintendent would face. What I discovered was that there were a lot of activities in the schools that had begun ten or twenty years before I got here that were directed toward multicultural education and affirmative action, toward making this an environment in which students and teachers had a great deal of respect for one another and that everyone was appreciated. What was lacking was any real commitment or leadership from administrators and the school committee. Beginning in 1991, I pulled together a group to talk about what it meant to be a diverse school district and what kind of goals we had to set for ourselves. A year later we brought a mission statement and goals to the school committee which they approved. . . . More recently we have reconstituted and reinvigorated the BAMSS steering committee

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to examine implementation and monitor progress in achieving the BAMSS goals. (Amherst Regional Public Schools 2006a)

In the area of institutional practices, Sayer told me that BAMSS “really gets into the issue of how people in the schools . . . respond to differences in the community . . . what kinds of accommodations do the schools have to make in order to invite all peoples into the school on some sort of equal basis.”5 However, the ways that Amherst’s official commitment to multiculturalism is understood in the town and its schools, by parents, teachers, schoolboard members, and school administrators varies.6 Beyond the official level, the apparent consensus about multiculturalism breaks down; its implementation is incomplete, and, more importantly, the meaning of multiculturalism is deeply contested. In mapping the domains in which contests about multiculturalism occur, it becomes clear that in a place where nearly everyone pledges allegiance to multiculturalism, there are still lively arguments about what multiculturalism means, about its significance in the educational process, and about the extent to which it has been or can be realized at the level of practice.7 Multiculturalists in Amherst are roughly divided into two camps: hard multiculturalists and soft multiculturalists.8 People in both camps see multiculturalism as about justice, though they define justice differently. Hard multiculturalists tend to equate achieving multiculturalism with achieving justice. Thus they see multiculturalism as an educational end in itself or as a constituent part of the achievement of broader social transformation. In either case, they deemphasize the traditional goals of education and traditional measures of excellence and achievement. Soft multiculturalists, on the other hand, do not see multiculturalism as an end in itself. Instead they treat it as an educational technology, a means to facilitate the attainment of the traditional goals of schools. Moreover, they do not seek social transformation; instead they accept the existing social structure and see multiculturalism as a way of ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to succeed within the society as it is.9 This division suggests that the debate about whether to emphasize excellence or pursue a multicultural agenda has not been resolved in this town, though here it is recoded and played out on the terrain of multiculturalism itself. In Amherst the issue is not whether to pursue that agenda, but rather it is about what multiculturalism means and how much prominence it should be given. Here, as elsewhere, “‘multiculturalism’ . . . [is] a contested concept rather than a description” (Minow, Shweder, and Markus, chapter 1, this volume). The division in Amherst also highlights the fact that multiculturalism is ideological; that is, it is part of a struggle to “control cultural terms in which the world is ordered and, within it, power legitimated” (Silbey 1998,

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286). Ideology refers to a situation in which there is “active contest over meanings, values, and beliefs” (Silbey 1998, 287). The ideology of multiculturalism in this town is indeterminate; it admits very different and sometimes contradictory understandings and practices, and it provides a set of relatively open symbols used by the town’s educators, school administrators, and parents to assert the legitimacy of widely divergent educational practices. Multiculturalism provides residents of Amherst with “maps of problematic social reality” that help to constitute and express their particular interests in public education (Geertz 1973, 220). Thus it operates as ideology by giving meaning to social relations and histories as well as by connecting ideas and values with interests and positions.10 Place and time shape the fragments and configurations used to construct the maps of social reality that claim the label of multiculturalism. Yet despite its local origins, multiculturalism, like other ideologies, is proclaimed in global terms (Lorrain 1979). Those who use it in this way deny the connections between the ideas they express and the particular associations and arguments in which they are grounded (Gabel 1980; Gordon 1981). Each of those ideologies asserts its singularity; each defines contingent practices as universal and necessary (Unger 1987). Each involves “conventionalized invocations of norms that simultaneously suggest and [seek to] eliminate competing ideologies” (Greenhouse 1988, 687). Multiculturalism, like other ideologies, becomes meaningful by creating distinctions and transforming them into oppositions. Moreover, the ideologies of multiculturalism favor particular views of education by asserting their claim to general respect and allegiance. Each of them seeks to provide an exclusive, normatively coherent and authoritative portrait of what the schools in Amherst should be doing.

Schools as Temples of Justice: Hard Multiculturalism and the Purposes of Public Education “As far as I can tell, it is all, a lot of bullshit, nothing more than a lot of talk.” This was the response of Rachel,11 single mother of two children, ages eight and fourteen, when I asked her to tell me her thoughts about multiculturalism in the Amherst schools. She said, “They talk a good game, but really do nothing very different than they used to before all this stuff about becoming multicultural.” For her, the school district’s commitment to multiculturalism is a source of both pride and disappointment. “This isn’t so much about my kids, who’d do well in almost any school environment, as it is about what this community stands for. I mean, you know, I love that the town cares. This is a place that sort of wants to do the right thing by all its kids. I just wish we did better at turning our caring into action. And, it makes me angry that they do so little when they promise so much.” Others shared Rachel’s sense of disappointment that the educational real-

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ity in the Amherst schools differed greatly from official policy. When asked about how much the BAMSS initiative mattered, one elementary-school teacher said, Well, I think on one level that it matters because it legitimizes the fact that focusing on multiculturalism and multicultural education is important to us. I think it allows us to, or really communicates that it’s a priority to the public, to parents, to the community, at large. I think it gives definition to some of our programs and certainly to practices so that we’re really focused on equality in education and inclusiveness about cultural diversity. I think it also is important because it really has us looking hard at barriers that do exist, and identifying those barriers. I would quickly add, because I’ve been here for a few years, we’ve been this “becoming” for a while. And, frankly, it’s been at least six, seven, or eight years that some of us have been saying look it was a great acronym to have this BAMSS initiative, but we’ve got to lose this “becoming” and we’ve got to do it. On the other hand, that idea that it’s a dynamic process and that individually we each are always having to explore our own, you know rethink our own, bias and prejudices and assumptions, that kind of thing. Perhaps you always are becoming. But, it makes it feel to some extent like we’re not getting there.

This teacher worries about the gap between Amherst’s multicultural aspirations and what the schools actually accomplish. She seems impatient and yet ambivalent, seeing the emphasis on process in the district’s official policies as itself an obstacle to attaining multicultural objectives even as she embraces their focus on the “dynamic” quality of multiculturalism. Some of those I spoke to acknowledged that their disappointment was the result of their high—and which Rachel labeled “perhaps unrealistic”—expectations. Rachel said, You see, it is kind of like this. When I think about multicultural education, I think about it like it was a project for making schools into models of justice. Some ways like people used to think of it as a holiday for every culture where schools would be just one ethnic feast after another. But that’s not the way I think of it. Schools have to do something that the society as a whole won’t do, treat everyone with respect, break down racism, and prejudice, and try to reimagine the world in a way that does not just ratify a middle-class, white man’s perspective. If multicultural education means anything, it means that. Yes that exactly. Or, you know, it is more important to me that my children be in schools that are just places than that they score at the top of any set of standardized tests. And we are a long way from making our schools into temples of justice in a society rife with injustice.

Rachel, like other hard multiculturalists, is explicit in stating her willingness to sacrifice achievement as it is traditionally understood in order to make

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schools into “temples of justice.” The district’s policies, in her view, all too often try to be all things to all people, and this tendency itself is a problem. The idea of schools as “temples of justice” is crucial to the vision of the parents, teachers, administrators, and school-board members whom I label “hard multiculturalists.” Because achieving multiculturalism is identified with achieving justice in schools and as a constituent part of a just society, they treat it as an end in itself—an end that is not easily attained because it requires radical transformation from the ground up (Sleeter 1996). It requires that norms of classrooms and of schools be renegotiated; it requires that what counts as excellence or achievement be reconsidered; and it requires that the ways that authority is exercised in schools and in relations between teachers and students be rethought. Sheila, an elementary-school teacher, explained that, The real project is social change, not just in Amherst. We try to teach in a way that will help prepare our students for a world without racism and prejudice. This means more than just making sure that students of color see themselves and their heritages in our curriculum. It means that we have to push ourselves and then all our students to be different kinds of people. Each classroom becomes a laboratory. Each one of us has to take our mission to conduct experiments in inclusion. We have to convey respect to everyone regardless of the place they come from. Whatever they bring to us, that’s what we take. It isn’t baggage, like their cultures are burdens to them and to us. It is the richness of human life that we have to affirm in each classroom and each school.12

Robert, a school administrator, described the goal of multicultural education in similar terms. I do believe that we’re planting seeds in an idealistic way for at least a better world. And, I think a multicultural awareness, a global perspective, certainly can help. Because the world desperately needs it. So if I’m here and I have these kids, and I have Muslim kids mixed in with kids from Western backgrounds, and I can teach kids about what the Muslim religion believes in and values then I would say, yes, we are creating a better world. I grew up in Eastern Massachusetts and Massachusetts was very segregated in those days. The suburbs of Boston didn’t allow people of color to buy homes. But my family was very interested in civil rights and brought those values to me and so I see schools that have that, you know, that should be the largest part of our mission, I think—tolerance and understanding.

Another administrator explained that in his view, Multiculturalism is tied into antibias work and can create a classroom where kids can look at issues of social justice. Like in kindergarten, we’re looking at creating a classroom in which kids talk about skin color, different kinds of hair,

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different eye shapes. That’s something that we actually study. We actually put that out on the table in a way that it’s part of the curriculum. And, I think that takes a teacher that’s comfortable. So that if somebody says something about somebody’s hair, or “Gee look at your eyes”—is the teacher able to take that moment and talk about it? “Well his eyes are like this, because he’s from Korea and in Korea they have eyes that are shaped like this, and he can still see like everyone else, and isn’t that beautiful?” Or someone can touch somebody’s hair and say how beautiful it’s puffy like this. Or “Let’s look at his dark brown skin.” To really be open and talk about this, that’s really gifted teaching.13

The idea that schools should be temples of justice is exemplified by some hard multiculturalists in the defense of heterogeneous groupings in classes (Cohen and Lotan 1997). Speaking about such classes, one teacher said, They offer what I believe is access to education for all. The same access to education for all. And I believe that in our classes that are stratified one of the things that happens is that some students get more information than other folks do. . . . And I think that even now, if we look at the balances in our classes, there are going to be more white students in honors classes. So what that means is that we’re not giving the same access to education. I think the second reason that heterogeneity is a very good thing is that there are more, besides the access to education, there are clearly more students of color in heterogeneous classrooms than there are in the AP classes. If you’re really going to be, I guess, immersed in anti-racist practices, those voices have to be there. Otherwise, the teacher is really the only sole voice for the people of color and then generally the voice of privilege reigns.

When I asked another veteran teacher how she would know when the schools in Amherst had achieved real multiculturalism, she said, I think that, as I take it from the perspective of classroom teacher, I might not find myself in meetings or losing sleep about how I’m going to speak up for the kids who are less represented or more disenfranchised. I’m not going to find myself in special education meetings feeling like I better be silent or people are going to speak to me after the meeting, but knowing full well that I can’t keep quiet. Because that really has to be part of the whole multicultural perspective. So there’s that piece. I think we’d know because we also would be having, not just these celebrations of diversity and multicultural affairs, but there really would be more interconnectedness of the cultures. I think that there would also be more consistency and more opportunity perhaps in terms of professional development. . . . And, I guess one example for me is that the idea that you know to become a better facilitator of the discussions around discrimination or inequality in the classroom.

This teacher has a clear, if not clearly articulated, set of indicators which she readily deploys in measuring progress on the road toward multiculturalism.

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While several of the indicators seem quite tangible (for example, more professional development focused on multiculturalism), the first that she names is more psychological. It is more about her feeling the need to push a multicultural agenda at places and times when it might be regarded as inappropriate to do so and about her worry that she pays a cost for doing so. Still another teacher said, We’ll have it [multiculturalism] when throughout the curriculum the student can see their voices and in the classroom, they can hear their voices. And know that each of those voices is valued regardless of what culture they come from. That they have a story to tell and that story is significant. And in the literature we read we’re going to be talking about people’s struggles from all different walks of life and in the end there are certain universals. There are also certain differences. And it all in some ways adds up to who we are in the big world out there. And the more we can model the diversity of experience in the world, the better our students are going to be when they go out and encounter that world.

While a relatively new administrator answered my question about what the achievement of multiculturalism would look like in a somewhat different way, he too emphasized the primacy of dignity, respect, and social transformation.14 I think there are a number of different ways, I think moving in as a principal I feel that I can say “Can we build up a school culture, where multicultural awareness or diversity is interwoven into the fabric of our daily life?” So, I’m very much in favor that the school itself, you know just look around, what we have up on the walls. That as soon as you walk in you’ll say, “Oh, okay, this is what we believe in, this is what we value; this is the wonderful diversity that we have here.” So that at a schoolwide level it is the cultural part—that’s in the visuals. I’m also a believer in schools setting up rituals or gatherings, or assemblies or other types of celebrations that also highlight our diversity. So that people see the richness of that, and learn about it.

But for him, like other hard multiculturalists, the challenge of achieving multicultural education goes beyond the symbolic life of the school. He explained, I think that there’s another part. And that’s in our daily interactions. How teachers speak, and how teachers in the course of conversations, raise other people’s perspectives. For instance there was a third grader, I was in her class during a science unit on simple machines. They were trying to brainstorm all the different types of machines; it was just like an initial activity thinking about what’s a machine. And somehow they got off into a philosophical religious discussion about whether it’s a machine or whether God made it versus whether a human made it. And then they started talking about God. And they were all giv-

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ing their perspective about God and Jesus, and thinking about it. And so I was there and so I happened to just interject that there’s many different ways as people think about God. They think about God and Jesus one way, but there are many other religions. So I think it’s always looking for that teachable moment in conversation I think, in terms of raising people’s awareness of the differences in the world and what people believe and value. The other part is really looking at the curriculum. And I used to feel this as a teacher. You know, can you infuse a multicultural awareness into your curriculum—into your math or into your English language arts, into your writing assignments, into your sciences or social studies. And I think that in some ways really requires work. In everything we do we must communicate that we’re a place that respects diversity; we don’t make fun of people that are different. We try to understand people who are different from us, we respect, we try to learn about people’s culture.

Picking up on the idea that schools should be temples of justice in an unjust society, he continued, We are trying to create a certain kind of learning community. What should our learning community look like? So the last two years we’ve been developing our own version of habits of mind. . . . We are in the beginning stages of doing that, but when they [students] are faced with a problem, they’ll understand here’s how you can use your mind in a way that’s helpful. . . . I don’t know if people will say they’re habits of mind, but equity and empathy. In other words, can you empathize with somebody who is different than you? We call it a habit of mind. Because it will help you learn about other people. You know, equity is everybody’s voice because then we hear lots of different voices and we can learn that way. . . . It’s not just a question of multiculturalism, it is, I guess I think, at the end of the day a question of justice. Yes, we are creating a better world, making it less likely that our kids will just take the world as it is and try to fit themselves into the way things are.

Another teacher endorsed this equation of multicultural education and social transformation but bemoaned the fact that even “in a progressive town like Amherst, most of us still don’t get it.” Moreover, she said, There are a lot of white students and faculty who just feel like, “All we do is focus on the oppression of these poor black children, and I don’t get any attention, and I’m tired of it.” I mean that sentiment is so strong in this school. And there’s also a huge population of the school that says, “This is a diverse town, and this is a diverse school, and everybody gets along and it’s great and there’s no racism in Amherst, and there’s no racism in the classroom, and everybody is treated the same.” . . . But there’s a failure to see on the part of students and faculty. I mean I just had my lit students write perceptions papers: “How do you perceive the racial climate in the school, the town, and the country and why did you take this class? Please back up your observations with personal

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experiences or things you’ve read or heard about.” A huge, huge, portion of white students just said that this is the “happy valley, it’s so wonderful here, everybody is treated equally.” You know, one or two acknowledged that maybe if you’re a white student you could walk through the halls without a pass for two hours and nobody would bother you and nobody would stop you, but if you’re black you probably couldn’t get ten feet. But very few of them acknowledged the reality of what our school is like. And then you read the papers of students of color and they say, “I get followed every time I walk in to CVS, I can’t get half way down the hall without a pass, I’ve never had a black teacher.” So, you see, even here we’ve got a huge amount of work to do.

For many hard multiculturalists, a key reminder of this work is found in the very small number of teachers of color in the Amherst schools.15 One teacher in the high school told me, In my view, the absence of a racially, culturally diverse faculty undermines the effort to produce a multicultural school. I think it’s very important that the kids get a multicultural curriculum and multicultural messages from white teachers. But I think it’s also very important that all kids see themselves represented in the faculty in some positive way. Unfortunately, right now kids of color mostly see themselves represented on the custodial staff. I think that’s a huge problem. It’s a national problem. Springfield, for example, has a much higher percentage of teachers of color than we do. But it’s nowhere near the percentage of kids in the schools, nowhere near what it needs to be.

Hard multiculturalists believe that addressing issues of discrimination and inequality is among the most important work that multicultural schools can do (Kirp 1982; Thomson 2001). Indeed this goal is so much a part of their “taken-for-granted” world that when I asked a teacher if she was willing to trade off helping her students become better in the traditional subject matters of school in order to foster discussions around discrimination and inequality, she seemed initially at a loss for words. I’m not sure what to say, see, I’m not sure I can explain to you. For me, I think, the difference between teaching here and teaching in some other place is that that’s not really ever a question. Sure we’ve got tests, MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System], to think about, but what could be more important than to teach kids to see injustice and fight it? That’s what it means to me to be committed to a multicultural approach to education. If I see something in my classroom that smacks of prejudice or ignorance around issues of race or culture I stop everything. That becomes the issue. If I can help kids see what went on in a developmentally appropriate way and see it in a way that helps them see the injustice of it, I’ve earned my pay for that day anyway.

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When I again inquired about this trade-off between the traditional goals of education and Amherst’s multicultural commitments a first-grade teacher said, I think that as a first-grade teacher, I have to teach everybody to read and write. And I have a huge responsibility to make that happen by June, and to be at a certain reading level. But, I have this overarching responsibility to do my piece in the vertical alignment of what has to happen for these little kids to have them ready to be productive citizens in a global society, in the twenty-first century. And so, if you’re going to sit in the corner and read but you can’t get along with anybody, we’ve really got a problem here. And so . . . I think of multicultural education as something that has a way of I guess it is an end in this regards— but it’s a way of impacting so that we’re really transforming the way that these kids are going to take their roles in society.

She provided the following example of her commitment and her pedagogical practices: Here we are learning about Japan in first grade, and one of the little boys has said “Well, I’m never going there because those people wear dresses.” Now, we thought we’d learn about kimono, and in contemporary Japan people are dressed sort of like you and me. But, we’ve got to stop and do that. . . . Probably more important are the times when somebody has laughed out loud because somebody just made a mistake. Those kinds of things you have to stop and address. . . . There are costs because the children who are sitting there inattentive anyway, or struggling with other processing and learning issues, you know, my ELL learners who you want hanging onto every multisensory aspect of the lesson. . . . So I think there are costs in that regard, but I guess I think the cost would be far greater if we didn’t stop and do those things.

She went on to explain that one ambition of multicultural education is lessening the cost that students of color and other minority groups pay in coming to school (this idea is discussed in Trumbull et al. 2001). For my own kids coming to school was always easy. They were ready: plenty of books, reading, and lots of talk about politeness. It is as if they were presocialized into appropriate school-behavior mode. But that’s not true for many of my students. Coming into this building means entering a different world, right, something that their homes or communities don’t prepare them for. To some extent it is class, but not all of it. My job, some big part of it, is to reduce that cost or to make the cost matter less in terms of how they experience their time in school. . . . So okay, you’re a Chinese student in my class and that’s a part of your identity but you know you live in the United States in Amherst and you’ve got some piece of that identity and here you are part of this first-grade family as well. . . . So we kind of pull those pieces together for some different cultures

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or cultural identities within the classroom and really connect them in some way. So that ultimately we’re kind of bringing this all back around together to realize that we’re in this circle. We want to make everyone feel good about who they are.16

The need to reduce the cost of coming to school and “making everyone fell good about who they are” is so high on the agenda of hard multiculturalists in Amherst that some have begun to say that the schools should adopt what one parent called “a multicultural behavior code.” This idea is not contemplated in the policy of the school district. When I asked for an explanation of what a multicultural behavior code would entail, one parent explained: Look, everyone knows that even in the Amherst schools, students of color are more likely to be singled out for discipline than are other students. That in itself is not a surprise. But some folks now want to write it off to a few kids who get into trouble lots of times. Foolish. Our schools need to take kids as they find them, not try to mold them into a single “Yes sir, yes ma’am,” standstraight, hands-to-yourself-in-line mass. . . . That means that behaviors that would not be accepted from privileged white kids maybe should be more put up with from students from disadvantaged backgrounds or from different cultures. It could be something little like dressing in certain ways to maybe even using profanity in an English class to say that “This is a pretty shitty book.”

Another parent put it this way: “You can’t be doing justice if you make everyone behave alike. Accommodation shouldn’t be limited to special ed. kids. Schools in Amherst have to be tolerant of a range of things that different cultures bring with them.” And a teacher, who is himself an advocate of a multicultural approach to both pedagogy and discipline, said, There are children, cultural aspects that make me think about I’m not going to ask that child to look me in the eye or I’m not going to ask him to always be looking. I’m going to be careful about not touching certain children, standing over them versus sitting at eye level. There are also things about questions that are very different in different cultures because there are children for whom being asked questions . . . it would be disrespectful for some children to think that they would have the answer.

Today, some hard multiculturalists tell the story of public education in Amherst by reference to what they see as a glorious past and a less glorious present. They fear that they are losing sway in a battle to define what the town’s multicultural agenda will be. What one parent called the “let’s help everybody get rich crowd,” or what another parent called the “new guard,” have taken up important leadership positions in the schools. These parents worry that, while those leaders are not overtly abandoning multiculturalism,

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they are watering it down, turning it in new directions—directions that one teacher called “bogus” and a parent called “fraudulent.”17 As Rachel explained, You know almost everyone here says that they believe in multicultural education, but some of the “Johnnie-Come-Latelies” are really hijacking it. What BAMSS was meant to be, well it can’t be everything. If it is just about getting better MCAS scores and cooling out kids so they’ll sit through the same old boring classes that I endured when I went to school, then it will quickly become, if it isn’t already, a sham. Everyone can say yes to multicultural education, but not everything flying under that banner is the real thing. And, for some of us, the fight is to say what the real thing is and make sure that our schools deliver it.

The Challenge of Public Education in a Flat World: Multiculturalism and Student Achievement The version of multiculturalism that Rachel and others like her find so troubling was, in my interviews, best represented by Carl, who holds an important administrative position in the school district. People like Carl do not think that the highest issue on the multicultural agenda should be justice or making schools into “temples of justice.” They take the existing social and political structure as a given and see in the strategies and tactics of multicultural education mechanisms to give all students a chance at success within that structure. These mechanisms are but one way to attain traditional educational goals. Indeed, soft multiculturalists like Carl would be willing to abandon those mechanisms if it could be shown that some other educational philosophy produced better results. In their view, the official commitments of the school district are right in linking multiculturalism with achievement and educational excellence (Gay 1994; Stickney 2003; Attinasi 1994). Nonetheless, some soft multiculturalists share with their hard multiculturalist counterparts a skepticism about the depth and reality of Amherst’s commitment to multiculturalism. As Carl said, The phrase multiculturalism is tired and worn and meaningless. It refers to everything and so it refers to nothing. . . . It can mean anything from a potluck supper during September when it is Hispanic student month to exposing the inadequacies of a school-board policy and anything in between. We live in a town with a lot of race and class dilettantes, as I call them. But, I also admit, there are others whose professional lives are organized around trying to do right on those fronts.

Like Rachel, Carl worries about the gap between the school district’s rhetorical commitment to multiculturalism and its implementation. He says,

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Things are incredibly diffuse. The number of initiatives, both in this building and my sense is throughout the district, that travel under the rubric of BAMSS efforts, you would need a scorecard to keep it straight. I mean it’s a set of acronyms that’s dizzying. And it testifies to the fact that the energy hasn’t been harnessed, that there’s no organizational synergy. The whole is by no means bigger than the sum of the parts. . . . And in my judgment, we’ve yet to turn a corner as a district and be very, very clear about how these concerns are going to influence practice. . . . What are the systems that the best research suggests holds promise of making a real difference in whether or not we going to be able to stop being able to predict because you are black you are not going to be in an honors class and you are not going to get a high school diploma? Right now those things are largely predictable. So BAMSS reads real well . . . but you look left and you look right and there’s still no black kids in the AP English classes. . . . We’ve never challenged ourselves operationally, that’s what wrong with multicultural education, right. We’ve got great rhetoric, we’ve got great citations, we’ve got really impressive bibliographies, so what. How has it changed practice in such a way that we can look at our constituents and say, “Yeah, we got warts, we got to fix what we haven’t figured out, we’ll make it a real serious challenge in making sure that everybody is challenged and working at the outer edge of their capacity. In other words, that everybody has equal access to high status knowledge, regardless of how in the end we get there?”18

For Carl and other soft multiculturalists, a key idea is for everyone to get access to high-status knowledge. Yet they have no interest in debating what counts, or should count in the future, as high-status knowledge. This is a settled debate. For them it is much more important to think about operational or organizational devices that will enlist multiculturalism to push students toward academic excellence. Despite these concerns, Carl believes that multiculturalism in Amherst has a pretty firm hold in the schools. What passes as settled here would be difficult start up work elsewhere. So the superintendent in the spring, can be the featured speaker at the dinner, organized by lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered group in the school district to celebrate the one-year anniversary of homosexual marriage in Massachusetts and make the following statement, “Most people think of Amherst as politically correct, this is just correct.” . . . So that’s incredibly refreshing, at the same time, uh how to harness that level of awareness and energy, so that there’s organizational improvement based on that is an entirely different agenda.

In contrast to the hard multiculturalists, Carl makes the unequivocal statement that the “be-all and end-all” of education in Amherst is “student achievement.”19 As he sees it, the hard-multiculturalist agenda is dated and irrelevant to contemporary conditions. Those conditions are, in his view,

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vividly captured in Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat (2005). “That’s going to be the basis of my opening-of-the-year pitch,” he said. In preparing it, I went back and read “The Nation at Risk,” Reagan’s educational program. . . . I was . . . just about to go to graduate school when it came out, and the key phrases were the “Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America’s Schools.” The other one was that if a foreign power had imposed these educational standards on us we would think about it as an act of war. Those are the two banner phrases. And, so the critique [of Reagan’s educational program] . . . was, “Bad, bad, bad, economically driven, money oriented, job focused, what about meaning?” I participated in all that. And some people today seem stuck where I was twenty years ago, but along comes Friedman, who says, “Who cares about meaning, your kid better be able to compete with Indian kids who may be better educated and certainly are more highly motivated.” And it is not all that different from what Reagan was having his people propound twenty years ago.

The question, “What about meaning?” captures an important difference between hard and soft multiculturalists. For the former, focusing on cultural meaning should be central to the educational mission of schools. For the latter, a key problem is that schools focused for too long on meaning and neglected the hard edge of education—namely, building skills. Carl’s statement that some people are “stuck where I was twenty years ago” captures the essence of his criticism of parents and teachers who equate multiculturalism with justice and social transformation. Carl praises Thomas Friedman’s book for its discussion of the skills that people need to compete in the new “flat world.” He said, Friedman has identified the cutting edge of the achievement gap. That things are such that, a middle-class life . . . is within the grasp of people who have a grounding, they have a set of intellectual skills, a storehouse of intellectual capital that is unparalleled. The expectations that people have is unparalleled, right. That if we want our kids, our black kids, our Latino kids, or Cambodian kids, to get out of here and find that world is a hospitable place, they had better learn some stuff. While he [Friedman] focuses entirely on math and science, you have the exact same thing in terms of people being able to read complex texts and render complex texts, with a pen or computer, that kids will spend their lives flipping hamburgers, if they are not able to step up to this technological plate. . . . But somehow this is, I just feel like we are playing out in an entirely different level here, that if we don’t get our shit together in terms of achievement gap, you can play pomp and circumstance at graduation as well as anybody else and it won’t mean anything, because the demands of the market place are so extreme. . . . And so just to go back to your question again, so there are a bunch a people that want to know that this is a racially hospitable place, that nobody yells at their kids because they are black, nobody treats them un-

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fairly, nobody gives them longer suspensions, right. . . . For me that’s a means, right. And, in some way it’s just another way of doing what schools have always tried to do. Everybody should be treated like that, cause in an educational organization those things are just means to an larger end. Right?20

Hard multiculturalists seek to minimize the psychological damage done to students of color and members of other minority groups caused by traditional modes of achievement, and they are willing to sacrifice that kind of achievement. While Carl agrees that students need to “feel comfortable” in school, he said, Some people find us moving too far away from the view that our goal is to be an organization that fundamentally respects kids. But I can live with that cause this ain’t pot smoking, multicolor banner waving, 1980s style therapy. I’m not a, this is not a social service agency, right. The place is not populated with social workers, with therapists, with psychologists, psychiatrists. . . . Educational organizations should have an opportunity for where kids can see the best of themselves and their culture and their history reflected and yet it also, the other thing the organization does is provide them an opportunity to see through and out and beyond, their immediate experience. Those other kinds of things can exist. They are not ends in themselves, but largely their means. They enable us to get kids situated, supported, clarified, so that when they get in the classroom they can function. . . . We are, at the end of the day, in the business of educating kids so they can make it in a world that their parents never dreamed of. If I have kids who feel affirmed in their identity, but can’t make their way in the marketplace what have I done?21

Like some hard multiculturalists, Carl tells a story of past and present. In doing so, he denigrates the views of those who have lost sight of today’s educational reality. Like other soft multiculturalists, he treats his view of education as if it were the only view that a reasonable person could, and should, hold.22 Hard multiculturalists believe that multiculturalism has been used as an excuse to compromise academic standards—a compromise that Carl insists the Amherst school district is no longer willing to make. He said, I read somewhere that “Education for the best is the best education for all.” I think that gets it right. Multiculturalism means finding ways to bring everyone up, to provide an education for the best to everyone. Too many people in this town, all for the best of reasons, can’t get their heads around that. They wouldn’t admit it, but they think you achieve equity by demanding less of everybody. I believe for all those neurological impaired kids, all the way up the ladder, if we expect kids going to Ivy League schools to be able to read thick books and write complex papers . . . then it better be expected it of everybody else. Because, by expecting it of the high-range kids, we have identified that as the

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most valued cultural capital. And, if we are not about to extended that to everybody, then we ain’t got a shot. The issue for me is as an organization can we provide an equal . . . access to all our kids to what I describe as high-status knowledge.

Carl thinks that hard multiculturalists have little to say about the really important tasks that confront teachers every day in schools that are committed to a multicultural agenda. He said, Their ideological cart is in front of their pedagogical horse. For them having potluck suppers to celebrate everybody’s heritage becomes an end in itself. They have a vision of differentiated instruction that’s ideologically inspiring. But how do we teach in an inclusive classroom, with kids from many different backgrounds and with very different talents? Tracking used to take care of that, but if you are committed to multiculturalism, then every classroom itself has to look like America. Your best teachers, your best teachers are taxed and challenged by that question, far above any other question that is facing us in America. So what, here’s my issue, it’s a better set of headaches. So I like the notion that we’re liberating these folks, we’re bringing them up into the sunshine, we’re going to challenge them academically because typically they’ve been undeserved. And the question for every teacher should be how do I get my classroom to function in a way where everybody’s working at their outer edge of their capacity.23

Because of his focus on preparing students for the world as it is, Carl has little tolerance for the suggestion that schools should have different behavioral or disciplinary standards for students from different cultures. There is definitely a collection of people in the community that have that on their radar screens. They say that our schools are racist by virtue of inequity in the way the disciplinary code is administered. As they see it, there is not sufficient sensitivity on the part of the regular faculty to appreciate that certain behaviors can be coded differently . . . that things can be seen and interpreted differently. Right, so the noise level, clothing, posture, response to authority in general . . . all those things are too quickly coded by white folks as challenging, hostility, resistance to authority. But when I am king nobody, nobody will show their underwear, not ever, not once. So you can’t say “fuck” out loud in class, you can’t. Or any of those other “George Carlin words,” you can’t say them not ever, not no how. “But you pissed me off.” Sorry, you need to find a better set of words. “But that’s what my mother says to me at home.” Right. “When my father is pissed at me, that’s what he says to me.” Sorry, you’re here now. You can learn to be bicultural, right? How you hang out there, how you run your mouth on the street corner with mom or grandpa . . . I don’t care about it. You need to figure out a different way to manage your anger when you’re here. So that’s, in that way I’m culturally insensitive, and I am willing to take the stance that perhaps that there are less than functional dimensions of the ex-

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isting culture that need to be remedied. But it is a good thing that the school comes along and takes hard stances.24

Yet Carl insists that schools have to take culture seriously not only in their symbols and in their curriculum, but also in the ways that teachers assert their authority. How kids respond to authority is something that is interesting for us to take note of. . . . Like on one level, you might say that I said it, that should be sufficient . . . I should, get the expected response. But this is often just the kind of . . . oppositional strategies that kids from minority groups have developed in order to save face in hostile organizations, right. Namely schools, courts, and things. “So I can’t win at your game, right, I’m not going to be rewriting words that you think I am supposed to rewrite so what I am going to do is I am going to discredit your whole program, right? And I am going to come and I am not going to get any respect or acknowledgment, right? I save face, I get out of here not knowing a thing.” That’s no good. If we are going to make progress on the achievement gap, we have to take these cultural codes seriously. Yeah, I want to maintain the teacher’s authority, but I also want to put the teachers in a place to think about the ways in which they express their authority and find ways of doing it that breaks the cycle of those oppositional strategies. That’s one place where BAMSS comes in.25

Carl is very aware of the arguments of people in the community who I’ve labeled hard multiculturalists. If these people get their way, Carl suggests, schools in Amherst would give in to what George W. Bush calls the “soft racism of lowered expectations.” He observes that some multiculturalists fall prey to this when they say that schools should have music classes that are based on African music, because you can’t, you are not going to get all those black kids playing the violin to Mozart. Bullshit. The real triumph of a multicultural agenda will be when we have a room full of black kids with violins in their arms. It just, it takes your breath away. Success would mean that we are going to have black Shakespearian scholars and white people that have PhDs in Caribbean studies and African American studies. I hate the idea that black kids need to study these kinds of things because they are black and if we don’t do that we are a racist organization. Hell, if you listen to my critics we might as well give that up right from the start.

Carl is determined not to listen to those critics. While he thinks that his views now have the upper hand, he worries that he is battling against a determined opposition. A few years ago . . . it seemed that the multicultural agenda was highly tilted against views like mine, but I’m not so sure any more. There is to be sure a very

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vocal group, but I think we are making progress in refocusing the agenda. Now there is a real fight here, you know, it makes things never dull. Some people think that the town is so PC that we all sing the same tunes. Ain’t so. And what’s the fight? Well when you try to bring, somehow bring up the floor, closing the achievement gap, right, traffics under a number different images, is the fundamental issue, but now there’s legitimate push back. “What about my kid?” I got neighbors, I got neighbors that were taking kids out of public schools because there are too many kids with IEPs in the class, and they dominate the arrangement. Their kids are undeserved, and they’ve been reading since they were four. But they still say they believe in multiculturalism. And, then there are people that hate me because I won’t put up with bullshit and say that that is respect for difference. They say that they are the real multicultural people and I’m a running dog for something. But I say that what they call multiculturalism just sells out kids who need us the most. Sure it keeps the lid on in schools, but what are we doing to give those kids a shot at a life. You asked me what multiculturalism means. Well, in this town it’s the language you have to speak to get in the game, but I’m not sure that it gets us very far. It is the starting point for all our best arguments about education, about what our public schools can and should do.

Conclusion The Amherst experience suggests that what multiculturalism refers to may be rather unclear in any place and at any time. When Carl said, “It is the starting point for all our best arguments about education, about what our public schools can and should do,” he put his finger on an important fact about multicultural education. Even in a school district like Amherst that embraces multiculturalism, it may be difficult to know what that embrace means or entails.26 At least in this one town, there is as much division as unity, and as much conflict as consensus, over the meaning of multicultural education and its symbols. Here, multiculturalism provides a linguistic passageway from the expression of particular preferences and interests to the realm of the town’s hegemonic political and social commitments. In contrast to other small towns (see Lindkvist’s description of Lewiston, Maine, chapter 5, this volume), multiculturalism in Amherst is the “language you have to speak to get in the game.” Use of that language is particularly salient in periods when educational practices are, or are perceived to be, unsettled. In Amherst, multiculturalism has become a means through which people both inside and outside the schools respond to, and seek to bring about, changes in their community and in their practices.27 Moreover, it is a way of marking differences, and of translating those differences into issues of right and wrong and of staking out a claim to the moral high ground. The people whose views are described in this paper participate in a school community that is coming to terms with change and diversification. This

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community is, of course, neither a microcosm nor a representation of educational communities elsewhere, nor does it precisely register transformations taking place at the national level. At the same time, however, this setting provides a manageable context in which to observe how, even in places where multiculturalism is ascendant, different versions may be used to defend or challenge established customs, provide interpretations of the past as well as ways of imagining the future, and describe the processes through which particular ways of doing business in the schools become objects of political contention. The district’s official policy statements treat multiculturalism as a set of essential attributes, and encourage commonality and unity among educators. They seek to solidify commitment to multiculturalism. Yet, as seen in the attitudes and arguments of various participants in this community, multiculturalism is not a set of essential attributes, but is instead a way of describing a political project through which different interests compete for control of schools. Almost everyone in Amherst embraces their own version of multicultural education to justify practices which others find anathema. Hard multiculturalists believe that schools should strive to make each child feel welcome by accepting the customs, speech, dress, and attitudes toward authority that each child brings with him to school. They seek to minimize the costs that students from disadvantaged backgrounds or minority cultures pay when they come to school. They hope to transform schools by making them “temples of justice” and, in so doing, using education as a wedge to foster social change. Soft multiculturalists believe that cultural accommodation is valuable insofar as it helps schools close the achievement gap and prepare all students for success in an increasingly competitive world. Sensitivity to culture, they argue, may be useful in breaking the authority-opposition and assertion-resistance cycles that prevent schools from doing what they can and should do for minority students, but it is no substitute for an academically demanding curriculum. They have no desire to turn schools into tools of social transformation. Despite their differences, hard and soft multiculturalists are joined in their commitment to a multicultural agenda. In this context, multiculturalism appears vague, complex, and contradictory. In a place which proudly proclaims that “we are all multiculturalists now,” the elasticity of multiculturalism makes it available as symbolic capital for different groups. Because it is robust in its credible meanings, it provides the conceptual terrain for efforts by different interests to claim respectability and legitimacy. Yet because its meanings are so hard to pin down, it is a terrain which cannot be confidently secured. Its elasticity means that multiculturalism in Amherst, and elsewhere, can be appropriated and deployed by people representing a wide range of interests and approaches to education. In Amherst and elsewhere a commitment

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to multiculturalism shifts the terrain of, rather than ends, the debate about what schools should do and what public education should be.

Notes 1.

In April 2004, the Amherst Town Meeting approved the following three resolutions: Whereas 20th Century science and technology created a real and present threat of exterminating the human species and our natural environment with nuclear weapons, we ardently hope for a 21st Century society in which science and technology are utilized for humane purposes. The Town of Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, supports the Mayors for Peace initiative and the 2020 Vision Campaign and hereby demands that: 1) National governments increase dialogue, work conscientiously to build trust, and maintain and strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); 2) Nuclear-weapon states and de facto nuclear-weapon states, including non-parties to NPT, immediately cease all nuclear development programs, including those intended for space, and bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force forthwith; and 3) The 2005 NPT Review Conference in New York, which takes place just prior to the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, demands that nations begin to map the road to a nuclear-weapons free world with adoption by 2010 and a commitment to reach that goal by 2020. We hereby declare our renewed determination to act on behalf of our citizens to eliminate nuclear weapons and create a world without war in which resources are used to reduce hunger, poverty, refugee status, and human rights violations. We call upon the next President of the United States and the Congress in 2005 to repeal the new Medicare Act, protect Social Security from privatization, save Medicaid, and develop a comprehensive single-payer health care system for all Americans. The Amherst Representative Town Meeting calls upon the members of the Massachusetts Delegation to the United States Congress to vote to repeal the 2003 tax breaks that benefit only upper-income taxpayers, and redirect a portion of the restored funds to the states so they can stop painful budget cuts, and calls upon the members of the Massachusetts Delegation to the United States Congress to vote against any future tax breaks for wealthy Americans or large corporations, which erode the funding available for critical domestic priorities.

2. 3.

See http://www.arps.org/humanresources. Critical multiculturalism is distinct from conservative, liberal, or left-liberal varieties. In the former, students “see representations of various groups in their texts and the school’s curriculum, how these people are represented may be conservative or marginalizing” (Ladson-Billings 2003, 53). The liberal variety

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4.

is committed to a vision of human sameness among races and cultures (Ladson-Billings 2003, 54). This understanding of multiculturalism is codified in the district’s “six goal areas.” As the official policy states, The Amherst Pelham Regional Schools ensure that all members of our learning community—students, families and staff members—are learning, treated equitably, and share the responsibility for creating a caring environment in which we seek to lay the foundation for the transformation of society and the elimination of oppression and injustice through the following: I. Institutional Practices: Institutionalized Multiculturalism Institutional practices and governance protocols are just and equitable; they encourage and model inclusion, respect, access to power and learning, and community-building between and amongst students, families and staff. II. Curriculum: A Rigorous Multicultural Curriculum The curriculum is rigorous, relevant, broad and diverse; it consistently examines multiple perspectives, power, privilege, oppression and liberation; and it is conducive to the healthy social, emotional and academic development of students of all backgrounds. III. Instruction: Research-based Pedagogy Instructional practices are creative, research based, differentiated, engage all students, and provide each student with the specific support s/he needs to meet high standards. IV. Assessment: Purposeful Assessment Assessment tools are authentic and culturally-/socio-economically sensitive; they are used primarily for the purpose of adapting instructional strategies and curriculum content to meet each student’s distinct learning needs, as well as for program evaluation. V. Affirmative Action: A Staff Dedicated to BAMSS A qualified staff whose racial and cultural diversity is reflective of that of the community—and whose dedication to becoming a multicultural school system is exemplary—is hired, retained and promoted. VI. Professional Development: Comprehensive Staff Development The district’s staff development program is comprehensive and articulated; it is designed to develop multicultural competence and to build teachers’ capacities to teach students of diverse backgrounds successfully; and it supports career growth in content, pedagogy and relationships for every student’s membership and achievement.

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5.

See http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:nGNgUB4HpJwJ:www.amherstma .gov/annual_reports/2002/Regional_Schools.pdf+amherst+pelham+schools+ six+goal+areas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1. Recently the BAMSS implementation committee has developed a strategic plan designed to address the so called “achievement gap” in the town’s schools. The current superintendent, Jere Hochman, described this plan in a report to the Minority Student Achievement Network, of which Amherst is a member. According to this plan, meetings of teachers in Grades 5–8 will continue in order to improve articulation of the mathematics curriculum between the elementary and middle schools. The district’s goal is to enable most students to take a course in algebra in Grade 8. To support elementary teachers in implementing the mathematics curriculum and to facilitate communication between the different levels of the school system, the district also has created a new elementary mathematics coordinator position. The BAMSS plan also calls for more direct support of students to improve achievement. This year, the high school will initiate a tutorial program to assist students who have not yet met the state’s rigorous achievement standards in English and mathematics. Teachers will be assigned to meet with tutorial groups of 2–5 students for two hours a week throughout the school year. In addition, after-school tutorial support and an expanded summer school program will continue to be available to students having difficulty passing the state’s achievement tests. . . . The district will expand Project Challenge, a program at the high school that provides counseling and tutorial support for students attempting honors courses for the first time. In addition, 80 percent of the preK–12 faculty have completed a 16- to 24-hour workshop series on “Anti-Racist Teaching Practices.” . . . Meanwhile, the district is expanding its professional development offerings, including a new workshop series on Cambodian culture. (NetworkNews 2004)

6.

7.

8.

To find out how the symbols of multiculturalism are mobilized in the Amherst schools, I interviewed thirty-four people, including parents, members of the school committee, teachers, and administrators during the fall and winter of 2005 and the spring of 2006. My interviews were open-ended and lasted on average between one and two hours. The debates in Amherst mirror, if they do not precisely replicate, debates portrayed in the literature on multicultural education. See, for example, articles by James Banks (1992, 2003); Geneva Gay (“A Synthesis of Scholarship in Multicultural Education”); Caleb Rosado (“What Makes a School Multicultural?”). Reviewing this literature suggests that Amherst’s official policies embody an unusually extreme commitment to multiculturalism. The terms hard multiculturalists and soft multiculturalists are taken from a book written by Gary Gerstle (2001). This terminology is not meant to capture the criticism of multicultural education as itself “soft” and incompatible with the most rigorous educational standards. I am using it instead to characterize

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divisions within a community committed to multiculturalism and the difference about the meaning of that commitment. Of the thirty-four people I interviewed, I classified sixteen as hard multiculturalists and eighteen as soft multiculturalists. In addition, while the strength and clarity of people’s articulation of these positions varied, two distinct clusters of views are apparent. I want to emphasize that these positions represent clusters of views rather than singular beliefs. For other purposes, it would be possible to array these views along a continuum, with people distributed according to the strength of their commitment to a soft or hard multiculturalist position. I am not suggesting that everyone in Amherst is a committed multiculturalist. Even in this town, multiculturalism as an educational philosophy has its critics. However, they seem to be a very small minority. And, over time, critics have tended to adopt the vocabulary and symbols of multiculturalism in order to make their voices heard. 9. Richard A. Shweder (chapter 9, this volume) describes the kind of difference I am describing as the difference between a “pluralism” and an “inclusion” agenda. 10. Because my work is largely descriptive rather than explanatory, I did not systematically investigate the sources of hard or soft multiculturalist views. Nonetheless, it seems that newcomers to Amherst and its school system are more likely to embrace a soft multiculturalist position and to use it to advance an agenda of school reform. Hard multiculturalists are more likely to be found among longer-term residents of the town and among teachers and administrators who have been in the Amherst schools for more than a decade. Their embrace of hard multiculturalism was part of their defense of school practices, which they believe to be under attack. Finally, adherence to hard or soft multiculturalist views does not seem to be a function of race, ethnicity, or class. 11. To protect the identity of my respondents, I use pseudonyms or identify them solely by their position (for example, teacher, administrator, or parent). 12. Others echoed this opinion. A teacher in the high school said, “I think we’ve got an obligation to try to move society a little bit, to get our perception of what is culturally valuable broadened.” Or, as an elementary teacher noted, “multicultural education means trying to address the inherent inequities in our culture. It’s a way to redress the injustice and racism and classism that we’re steeped in.” 13. For a description of what is entailed in doing antibias work in schools see Robin Cooley’s article (2003). 14. “Ultimately, the goal of multicultural education is to contribute progressively and proactively to the transformation of society and to the application and maintenance of social justice and equity.” See Gorski and EdChange (”Multicultural Pavilion”). For an argument that multicultural education is unlikely to bring about social transformation, see Michael Olneck’s article (2000). 15. For a discussion of this problem at the national level, see Ellen Alcorn’s article, “The Diversity Crisis in Teaching.” Ellen Alcorn notes that “across the country, 40 percent of students have never been taught by a person of color” (2003).

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16.

17.

18.

Speaking about the home-school divide for minority groups, a member of the district’s school committee said, “You know some people get all upset cause people of color, especially African Americans and Hispanics, generally don’t show up at the PTO meetings in their kids’ schools. Well, no surprise cause schools are culturally stacked against them. So they feel like ‘I don’t want to be there and that they don’t treat my children like the other kids.’ Those parents probably experienced schools as hostile places that never gave people space to do what they need to do. It is this experience that all our work on BAMSS is designed to change.” Speaking about the nation as a whole, Gary Gerstle (quoted in Rodriguez 2006) argues that “multiculturalism was born of radicalism, but that kind is confined to the academy and [is] marginal to the way Americans live. . . . ‘Hard’ multiculturalism was defeated, tamed, domesticated, and then absorbed. What we have now is a soft multiculturalism that has helped build broad acceptance for the idea that as long as you declare yourself to be an American, then celebrating your ethnicity is acceptable.” Sharing Carl’s concerns about organizational coherence, another administrator said, I think that there’s been a tradition in Amherst of classroom autonomy. I think that . . . tradition of classroom autonomy . . . means that we are often not on the same page. Things are not aligned, meaning, if you’re in first grade and you’re doing a unit on the family and you’re showing kids and you’re exposing them to all different types of families, fantastic. But in second grade, there’s no follow-up to that or there’s no next step with that, that’s a problem. If you’re saying, we don’t celebrate African American History month, we celebrate it throughout our curriculum all through the year, that’s fabulous, that’s great. But when the month of February comes around, if you don’t tell kids why you’re not celebrating African American History Month, you sort of lose your BAMSS piece there. That’s what I mean by it’s not connected this way and it’s not connected this way.

19.

As one teacher in the high school observed, “Multicultural education involves thinking about how do we get all kids to achieve better.” Another said, I am confident that multiculturalism can be achieved without the sacrifice of the skills, ability, and awareness that allows somebody to succeed. But I see some people who believe that excessive multiculturalism will make it hard to deliver content. I see people who believe that content . . . is not as important as dignity. Holidays, celebrations, taking time out of the high school calendar for an Asian week, that makes some people grumble. . . . Yeah. That tension exists, it’s real. It exists in the student body too. I’ve heard students express some of the same things the teachers say: “Oh not another celebration, couldn’t we just go to class?” . . . So I think it’s a constant negotiation. I think certainly we’re talking about a greater cultural transformation because our definitions of success are about succeeding beyond the building. Multiculturalism can be achieved without

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the sacrifice of the skills, ability, and awareness that allows somebody to succeed. 20.

21.

Speaking of the school district’s membership in the Minority Student Achievement Network (a coalition of twenty-five multiracial, urban-suburban school districts across the United States whose mission is to discover, develop, and implement the means to ensure high academic achievement for students of color, specifically African American and Latino students), a school administrator said the district’s goal should be “to reduce, to eliminate any predictability of student achievement or performance based on race. . . . We should not be able to use race to predict who is going to go to calculus or get suspended because of their race. That’s the ultimate [goal], so now we are looking at it, so what are some other key benchmarks that we know, we are doing this one thing and we are monitoring that progress over time.” Another school administrator said, “I think the goal of education is to educate the child.” He continued, That’s the goal. Whether you get at it through multiculturalism, whether you get at it through back to basics, however you want to term it. The goal of education is to educate the child. . . . If you haven’t closed the achievement gap then something’s not right. If white kids are still testing better than black kids, if rich kids are still testing better than poor kids, if males are still doing better in mathematics than females, we’ve got a problem. . . . The focus should be on the results. If we get results, you can call it whatever you want, I could care less. I just want results. We don’t teach kids to get a C. We teach them, and we demand excellence for them. And, on their way to excellence if they arrive at average, I’m OK with that. But we teach and demand excellence. A member of the school committee said, I don’t want people to feel like they have to send their kids to the African American charter school that says “You know you go to school eight hours a day and on Saturday because nobody else is giving you enough academic rigor in order to make it.” We should have . . . both multiculturalism and rigorous education. We should continue in a way of striving toward that. And we would not want to be in the situation where somebody’s really bored and happy and singing Kumbiyah and not feeling the academics that the kids need. That’s not acceptable.

22.

23. 24.

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A teacher, who is relatively new to the Amherst schools, worried about what he called “the forces of reaction” in town. He applied this label to people who, in his view, want to return to the days when “all the schools here did was say ‘Great, you are great’ to students of color, all the while teaching them nothing.” For a discussion of multiculturalism as pedagogical practice, see Laurie Grobman’s article (2001). Another soft multiculturalist responded to my question about those who advocate a multicultural behavior code and greater tolerance for profanity by saying,

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The school culture can and should often look and feel and be very different for children than a home culture. I had a year at a school where I literally had a paper tree in the classroom and we had some branches that went off with “These are the things that happen at home and these are things that happen at school,” and yes, there’s a connectedness and an importance of having them all branch together, but this was the way it happened at school and this was the way it happened at home. So at school, it is unacceptable, that language is unacceptable. And it’s not something we can give a pass about. And, what we need to look for are other acceptable ways in the school culture, in the school environment, that your child can express his excitement or frustration or whatever it is. Another said, I’m saying that in this community there are certain things that we have to all come to an understanding about. And one thing that we must all understand is that there are times when we have to compromise on some of our practices. And the use of profanity is one of those things that I’m going to ask you to compromise on. And that’s okay if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, but just understand that for your child to be successful in this building, that’s a compromise that needs to happen. And, if you’re unwilling to have that compromise, then that’s unfortunate because the one you keep in the middle is your child. Because we’re not going to give up on our values and we’re not going to alter that. The expectation will be that he not use those words. 25. 26. 27.

For a discussion of the impact of academic programs on the achievement gap, see Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin‘s work (2006). As Gloria Ladson-Billings says, “Multicultural education is less a thing than a process” (2003, 51). For a different view of multicultural education, see Geneva Gay’s work (1992).

References Alcorn, Ellen. 2003. “The Diversity Crisis in Teaching.” Accessed May 2006 at http://featuredreports.monster.com/teacher/diversity/. Amherst Regional Public Schools. 2002. “Our Schools.” Accessed at http://www .arps.org/sup/INTEREST.HTM. ———. 2006a. “Statement of Mission and Goals.” Accessed at http://www .arps.org/humanresources. ———. 2006b. ARHS home page. Accessed at http://www.arps.org/hs/. ———. 2006c. “Application for Employment.” Accessed at http://www.arps.org/ humanresources. Amherst Town Meeting. 2004. “Resolutions.” Accessed at http://www.amherstma .gov/town_meeting/warrantsandresults/042904. Asante, Molefi, and Diane Ravitch. 1991. “Multiculturalism: An Exchange” American Scholar 60(2): 267–76. Attinasi, John. 1994. “Academic Achievement, Culture, and Literacy: An Introduc-

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tion.” North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Accessed at http://www .ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le0att.htm. Banks, James. 1992. “Multicultural Education: Approaches, Developments, and Dimensions.” In Vol. 1 of Cultural Diversity and the Schools: Prejudice, Polemic, or Progress, edited by James Lynch, Celia Modgil, and Sohan Modgil. London: Falmer Press. ———. 2003. “Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, Practice.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks. 2nd ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Cohen, Elizabeth G., and Rachel A. Lotan, editors. 1997. Working for Equity in Heterogeneous Classrooms: Sociological Theory in Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Cooley, Robin. 2003. “Beyond Pink and Blue.” Rethinking Schools Online, Winter. Accessed at http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/18_02/pink182.shtml. Daley, Beth. 1999. “A Community Divided: Amherst Reflects.” Boston Globe, December 2, 1999, B2 Feinberg, Walter. 1996. “The Goals of Multicultural Education: A Critical Re-Evaluation.” The Philosophy of Education Society. Accessed at http://www.ed .uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/96_docs/feinberg.html. Friedman, Thomas. 2005. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gabel, Peter. 1980. “Reification in Legal Reasoning.” Research in Law and Sociology 3: 25–51. Gay, Geneva. 1992. “The State of Multicultural Education in the United States.” In Education in Plural Societies: International Perspectives, edited by K. Adam Moodley. Calgary, Canada: Detslig Enterprises. ———. 1994. “A Synthesis of Scholarship in Multicultural Education.” North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Accessed at http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas /issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le0gay.htm. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gerstle, Gary. 2001. American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Gordon, Robert. 1981. “Historicism in Legal Scholarship.” Yale Law Journal 90(5): 1017–56. Gorski, Paul C., and EdChange. n.d. Multicultural Pavilion. Accessed at http://www .edchange.org/multicultural/curriculum/steps.html. Greenhouse, Carol. 1988. “Courting Difference: Issues of Interpretation and Comparison in the Study of Legal Ideologies.” Law and Society Review 22(4): 687–707. Grobman, Laurie. 2001. “Toward a Multicultural Pedagogy: Literary and Nonliterary Traditions.” High Beam Research. Accessed at http://www.highbeam.com/doc/ 1G1:77049941/Toward+a+Multicultural+Pedagogy~C~+Literary+and+Nonliter ary+Traditions.html?refid=SEO. Hanushek, Eric A., and Steven G. Rivkin. 2006. “School Quality and the BlackWhite Achievement Gap.” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper W12651.

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Kirp, David. 1982. Just Schools: The Idea of Racial Equality in American Education. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2003. “New Directions in Multicultural Education: Complexities, Boundaries, and Critical Race Theory.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James Banks and Cherry McGee Banks. 2nd ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Lorrain, Jorge. 1979. The Concept of Ideology. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press. McLaren, Peter. 1995. “White Terror and Oppositional Agency: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism.” In Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, edited by David Theo Goldberg. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing. NetworkNews. 2004. “Newsletter of the Minority Student Achievement Network.” NetworkNews 19. Evanston, Ill.: Minority Student Achievement Network. Olneck, Michael. 2000. “Can Multicultural Education Change What Counts as Cultural Capital?” American Educational Research Journal 37(2): 317–48. Rodriguez, Gregory. 2006. “Why ‘Multiculti’ Shouldn’t Scare You.” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2006. Accessed at http://www.newamercia.net/publications/arti cles/2006/why_multiculti_shouldnt_scare_you. Rosado, Caleb. 1997. “What Makes a School Multicultural?” EdChange Multicultural Pavilion. Accessed at http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/caleb/ multicultural.html. Ryan, Francis. 1993. “The Perils of Multiculturalism: Schooling for the Group.” Educational Horizons 7(3): 134–8 Silbey, Susan. 1998. “Ideology, Power, and Justice.” In Justice and Power in Sociolegal Studies, edited by Bryant Garth and Austin Sarat. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Sleeter, Christine E. 1996. Multicultural Education as Social Activism. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Sowell, Thomas. 2004. “‘Multicultural’ Education.” Accessed at http://www .tsowell.com/spmultic.html. Stickney, Donni. 2003. “Cultural and Academic Excellence Leaves No Child Behind.” Training and Technical Assistance Center at the College of William and Mary. Accessed at http://www.wm.edu/ttac/articles/teaching/cultural.html. Thomson, Pat. 2001. “Young People: Risks and/or Assets.” Keynote address at the Working Together—Reducing the Risk at Full Service Schools Conference. Department of Education and Training, New South Wales, Australia. Trumbull, Elise, Carrie Rothstein-Fish, Patricia Marks Greenfield, and Blanca Quiroz. 2001. Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Unger, Roberto. 1987. False Necessity. Vol. 1 of Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Webster, Yehudi O. 1997. Against the Multicultural Agenda: A Critical Thinking Alternative. New York: Praeger.

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5 UNIVERSAL PARTICULARISM: MAKING AN ETHICAL ISLAMIC SCHOOL IN CHICAGO Barnaby B. Riedel What makes [these values] Muslim? Aren’t they universal? I don’t think they’re just Muslim. I think it’s something that all religions have and all people. I mean, but Islam reinforces these as well as the others. —Science Teacher at an Islamic Private School The [Character Counts!] Coalition works to overcome the false but surprisingly powerful notion that no single value is intrinsically superior to another; that ethical values vary by race, class, gender and politics. (Character Counts! home page, accessed at http://www.charactercounts.org/backgrnd.htm)

T

hese quotes reflect a form of ethical universalism that is increasingly being appealed to in order to defend the reintroduction of moral pedagogy, particularly character education, in American schools. The first quotation is from a female science teacher at an Islamic private school in the suburbs of Chicago; the second is from the website of a mainstream American character-education curriculum, called Character Counts! This curriculum is now being implemented in hundreds of public and private schools across the country, including the Islamic private school at which the quoted science teacher works. The convergence of diverse religious and cultural groups around the idea of character education expresses the fact that many American educational communities are responding to the dilemmas of diversity by shifting their struggles with otherness to the realm of values. For such communities, values are endowed with the transcendental power to unite peoples of diverse national, cultural, and religious backgrounds under the umbrella of a shared educational aim: “strengthening the character of America’s youth” (Character Education Partnership 1998). Researchers and educators who support the return of character education portray American schools as dominated by market metaphors and a sense of

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purpose organized around competition and the pursuit of individual economic rewards. Educational communities that support the reintroduction of character education often blame the liberal, multicultural rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s for laying the ideological roots of an accelerating and invidious trend toward “radical individualism” and “the loss of community” in American society. From their perspective, the pluralist critique of moral education—rooted in the question, “Whose values?”—conflates the concerns of identity politics (including politics of gender, race, culture, and religion) with the goals of moral pedagogy. As they see it, the pluralist critique shows a lopsided emphasis on group recognition at the expense of an inclusive vision of education.1 William Damon, a contemporary scholar within the character-education movement, reflected this opinion when he responded to the question “Whose values?” by stating, “They are our values, the ‘our’ referring to the worldwide community of responsible adults concerned with the quality and very futures of the civilizations that their younger citizens will one day inherit” (2002, ix). Values, as many character educators see it, promote unity and sustain “civilizations” because they are self-evident and universal. As the director of Character Counts!, Michael Josephson has argued, “No one seriously questions the virtue of virtues or doubts that honesty is better than dishonesty, fairness is better than unfairness, kindness is better than cruelty, and moral courage is superior to cowardice and expediency” (1997, 212). I explore the broader political and pedagogical implications of the character-education movement through an examination of Universal School (not a pseudonym), an Islamic private school in Chicago that has adopted the Character Counts! Curriculum. Universal School’s accommodation of the character-education movement is surprising because, as a religious private school, it stands as a symbol of educational pluralism, particularly the right of groups to perpetuate their own distinctive communal identities through schooling. The character-education movement, on the other hand, represents the impulse to transcend cultural and religious diversity in pursuit of a common and unifying form of schooling. This, then, is the paradox. Why has Universal School combined the particularistic goals of Islamic education with the universalistic stance of the character-education movement? Why has a religious private school taken up a common-school agenda? As it turns out, issues of cultural and national diversity have been troublesome features at Universal School. Serving the children of families that come from places as diverse as the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent, the school includes a global diversity of Muslims, each with their own cultural and theological renderings of Islam. In order to manage this diversity and foster a sense of Muslim community, Universal School has come to define Islam principally in terms of a system of universal values and ethics rather than, for instance, a common cultural heritage or a set of beliefs based on a revealed book. Islamic education at Universal School has come to focus

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on the instantiation of virtue and the development of the “Muslim American Character,” because doing so gets them around (or over) cultural and theological differences within the school. And so the short answer to the question that frames this chapter—”Why has a religious private school taken up a common school agenda?”—is that Universal School has found in the character-education movement a common desire to move beyond issues of diversity in education, and a shared strategy for doing so. And yet the paradox remains. Universal School’s accommodation of the character-education movement does not erase the fact that at Universal School the Character Counts! Curriculum is used for the sake of Muslim social reproduction. The paradoxical coincidence of universalism and particularism at Universal School may signal a new trend among religious private schools as they adapt to a new and more multicultural America. Whereas religious private schools once provided protection from the assimilative pressures of the “common” or public school agenda, they may now be granting their students a safe haven from the moral ambiguities of pluralism and a public school system increasingly shaped by the claims of diversity. As paradoxical as it may seem, the principal privilege of religious private schooling today may be the ability to pursue universal visions of education within the idiom of particular communal identities.

Islamic Private Schools: Made in the U.S.A. Despite increasing scholarly interest in Islam over the past few decades, scant attention has been given to the evolution of Islamic educational institutions in the United States. Research on Islamic schooling has focused primarily on traditional forms of Islamic education in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia (Eickelman 1978; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996; Hefner and Zaman 2007; Kadi and Billeh 2007); and on the ways in which these institutions have been transformed in the wake of the colonial encounter (Starrett 1998; Mahmood 2005). In each case, Islam and its educational institutions are left overseas and distant, removed from the life and culture of the “West.” This is surprising considering that in the past fifteen years more than two hundred full-time Islamic schools have been established across the United States, catering to the educational and religious needs of over twenty thousand Muslim children (Sachs 1998). Though these schools account for the education of only about 5 percent of all American Muslim children, they are clearly on the rise. At present there are over 220 full-time Islamic schools in the country, signaling a 10 percent increase in just the last three years (Krupa 2005). Though unique within the history of Islamic education, Islamic private schools are continuous with trends in the history of education in the United States.2 The fact that Islamic schools in the United States have received so little

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recognition is both ironic and unfortunate. It is ironic because at a time when there is so much concern over the question, “Is there something about Islam?”, these schools provide a stark contrast to our anxious and often myopic imaginings. It is unfortunate because the master narrative of Arab and South Asian Muslims in the United States has been shaped by the persistence of prejudice and misrecognition. As the philosopher Charles Taylor noted, “a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves” (1994, 74). Not only do many Americans feel justified in publicly expressing their distrust of Muslims (especially since 9/11), but also the media has indirectly created a political climate in which they are marked as potentially disloyal aliens prone to violence, fanaticism, and fundamentalism. What is rarely understood is that most immigrant Muslims arrived in the United States not only well educated but also hopeful about incorporation and upward mobility. Today, these same Muslims have well-above-average incomes and lead largely middle class lifestyles. And it is these Muslims who are primarily responsible for having established the growing circuit of Islamic private schools in the United States.3 Education has always played a central role in the religion of Islam. As one Hadith (a saying of the prophet) states, “The prophet prayed, ‘O my Lord, do not let the sun set on any day during which I did not increase in knowledge,” The institutions, practices, and worldviews associated with Islamic education have varied greatly across time and place. For the sake of comparison to American Islamic schools, however, it is necessary to delimit this diversity to a set of features that allow for the discussion of a tradition. The basis of this tradition is the Qur’an; other than the mosque, its principal means of transmission was the kuttab, or Qur’anic school. The purpose of the Qur’anic school was to provide children with the foundations necessary for the practice of their faith. Students were taught to read Arabic and instruction focused on Qur’anic memorization and recitation. Beyond the level of the kuttab were other Islamic educational institutions, still in existence today, which bore the responsibility of preparing Islamic professionals. Among these advanced institutions are mosque schools, mosque study circles, bookshops, and universities. The most common and significant of these advanced institutions has traditionally been the madrasah (the plural of which is madaris), which focused on the study of tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis), the Hadith (sayings of the prophet), shari’a (Islamic law), fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and a variety of other appropriate subjects, often at very sophisticated levels of scholarship. As the political philosopher Michael Walzer noted, “Education expresses what is perhaps our deepest wish: to continue, to go on, to persist in the face of time. It is a program for social survival. And so it is relative to the society for which it is designed” (1983, 197). Such is the case with Islamic schools.

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If we take the madrasah system to represent the traditional model of Islamic education, then there is nothing especially traditional about Islamic schools in the United States. In both curriculum and motivation, these schools are more like other American religious private schools than any one of a variety of Islamic educational institutions on the other side of the Atlantic. The reasons for establishing Islamic private schools resemble the reasons that Jews and Catholics had for establishing their own schools at the turn of the twentieth century when anti-immigrant discrimination, combined with the “melting pot” presumptions of the common-schools movement, provided a strong impetus for immigrant communities to establish their own schools. Catholics and Jews in particular experienced the drive towards educational unity as having an overly liberal Protestant bias. From their perspective, biblical education in these schools left interpretation to the individual rather than religious authorities, and scripture was given authority over tradition. Private schooling was a way to resist this inclusive vision of education, making it possible for minorities to preserve and reproduce familiar structures of language, religion, and culture in an otherwise hostile social milieu (Cristillo 2004; Sanders 1977; Winter 1966). Whereas traditional forms of religious education focus almost exclusively on the transfer of religious knowledge, faith-based parochial schools focus on the preservation of communal identities while providing instruction in the secular subjects. The same is true of Islamic private schools. They devote themselves to the preservation and social reproduction of Muslim identity. When asked about the aim of Islamic education in the United States, a young science teacher at Universal School explained, “There’s really one aim. To establish an Islamic identity, an American Islamic identity, where students will come out viable and productive people of American society with their Islamic identity, kept, preserved, not destroyed, not lost.” The protective isolation that Islamic schools provide to Muslim students should not indicate a singularly antagonistic relationship to the American mainstream. Muslims who have immigrated to the United States have proven themselves democratically inclined, technologically savvy, and ambitiously career driven. Islamic schools cater to these inclinations by providing a competitive secular curriculum that can translate into high SAT and ACT scores and acceptance into the finest colleges. In other words, protective isolation, as with other private schools, is as much about preserving a communal identity as it is about enhancing academic achievement and giving students a competitive edge. The community of Islamic private schools is an upwardly mobile community that wants to succeed financially without compromising their religious commitments. Some scholars have even found signs of an emerging “Protestant ethic” among these American Muslims (Cristillo 2004). At the same time, they are not singularly optimistic about life in America. Principal among their concerns is what they perceive to be a moral crisis in American

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society. A study conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that 67 percent of American Muslims agreed that America is an immoral corrupt society (2001). On the topic of public schools, many Muslims join other Americans, particularly the socially conservative ones, in lamenting the existence of sexual licentiousness, drugs, violence, and a general lack of moral supervision. So concerned are they about the moral climate of American public education that it is not uncommon for Muslims to send their children to Catholic schools in the absence of an Islamic school alternative, where the stated emphasis is on academic excellence as well as God centeredness and moral upbringing.

Universal School: “Where Islam and Education Come Together” The Universal School motto, “Where Islam and Education Come Together,” strikes as a misnomer given the rich history of Islamic education. But for those who founded Universal School—one of the first of its kind in the country—this is what it felt like to provide a Muslim alternative to American public education. Chicago is now home to five full-time Islamic schools, all of which are certified by the State of Illinois and teach an accredited curriculum along with Islamic studies and Arabic-language courses. All of these schools are located in suburban communities and cater primarily to middle class and upper middle class American Muslim families. There is one school in the northern suburbs (Muslim Education Center), two in the western suburbs (College Preparatory School of America and Islamic Foundation School), and two in the southwestern suburb of Bridgeview (Universal School and Aqsa School). Four of these five Islamic schools are open to both boys and girls; Aqsa School is coed only up to grade four, after which it is exclusively for girls. The history of Universal School begins with the Muslim presence in Bridgeview. In the early 1970s, several urban working-class Palestinian families started looking for property to build a mosque. At that time, Bridgeview was a small Christian community on the industrial outskirts of Chicago with an abundance of inexpensive land. The first Muslims to settle in Bridgeview bought some of this land for a mosque, but it was years before they could afford to begin construction. Only after a second wave of Muslims arrived were they able to pull funds together and begin building. These Muslims were much more politically minded and educated than those already there; they were not clerks and salesmen, but were doctors, lawyers, and engineers. They were among the hundreds of thousands of well-educated and ambitious Muslims immigrating to the United States in the 1970s. Many of these Arab immigrants, particularly Egyptians and Syrians, came to the United States after postcolonial nationalist fervor in the Middle East failed to translate into

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higher standards of living and access to jobs. In Bridgeview, these Muslims joined the original Palestinian community, as well as more recent arrivals from Palestine who had immigrated after Israel’s 1967 takeover of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Finally, with strong transnational ties and a significant base of support, this community was able to raise enough money for the construction of the mosque (later named the Mosque Foundation). In the fall of 1981, just before Ramadan, it held its first call to prayer.4 Bridgeview Muslims have successfully adopted a parishlike model of community development, building solidarity in a local place on the basis of multi-institutional services, ethno-religious identity, and close residential proximity. The founding of the Mosque Foundation initiated the development of other nearby Muslim services and institutions. Where once there were swaths of open land, the area around the mosque bloomed with Islamic bookstores, Middle Eastern restaurants, and stores selling the latest Islamic fashions. In addition to commercial developments, a large residential development was built beside the mosque and inhabited primarily by mosque members. Today the mosque’s leadership reports that two-thirds of its participants live locally around Bridgeview, compared to one-third a decade ago. It is to the credit of this growing community that Universal School—and later the Aqsa School for girls—was built beside it.5 The idea for Universal School first arose when the son of a Syrian doctor returned home from public school deeply disturbed, later explaining to his father that he had seen pictures of naked women covering the inside of another boy’s locker. Shocked that his son had been exposed to pornography at school, the father called a meeting together with two of his friends to discuss the possibility of founding an Islamic school. To their knowledge no such school existed. In order to calculate whether other Muslims would be interested in the idea of a private Islamic education, they developed a survey and mailed it out to hundreds of Muslims around the country. Responses to this survey showed resounding interest and support. And so these three Syrian fathers committed themselves to the establishment of a school, raising money in the community as well as spending a good deal of their own. Construction began in 1988; two years later, on September 4, 1990, the school opened its doors to 140 students and 11 staff members. In 1992 the Illinois State Board of Education recognized and accredited Universal School. Today it is one of the largest pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade Islamic schools in the country, with over 600 students and 50 staff. Universal School, its mission statement begins, “is a dream come true.” Universal School sits on the perimeter of a large parking lot that services the Mosque Foundation, a Muslim youth center, the Muslim American Society (MAS) headquarters of Chicago, and the Aqsa School. The students call it “the box,” signaling not only its protective isolation from the outside world, but also its rather nondescript appearance. The building is long and squat and

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made of gray concrete. The only features defining its façade are two entrances, the Universal School name, and mirror-tinted vertical windows. If it were not for a playground and a set of basketball courts outside the school, one might mistake it for a professional building. Inside, the school boasts two floors of classrooms, a large gymnasium (used twice daily for prayer, or salat), two science labs, a library, large preschool and kindergarten rooms, and a sizable cafeteria in the basement. Inside, there is no mistaking that you are in school. A typical day at Universal School begins at eight thirty in the morning. Upon arriving, students are checked at the front door for being on time and properly dressed. Tardy slips are handed out when a student is late, and a note is made when a student has failed to dress according to code. Students must have regular haircuts. They must wear socks and closed-toe shoes; the girls must not wear makeup; the boys must not wear earrings. Older girls must wear a hijab (the female headscarf) and a calf-length navy-blue top, similar to the traditional jilbab. Younger girls wear the ubiquitous plaid skirt of Catholic-school uniforms. The boys, on the other hand, must wear navy dress pants and light-blue or white collared shirts. After checking into class, the school gathers in the gym for prayer and the day’s announcements. Students remove their shoes upon entering the gym and take their position on strips of rug laid out diagonally across the gym floor. The rugs are positioned to orient prayer towards Mecca, the spiritual center of the Muslim world. Prayer does not begin until all students are organized into rows by grade and gender—men at the front, women at the back, elders before juniors. The faculty performs rounds to ensure that everyone is in place and quiet. Once students are settled, a microphone is given to a male student, usually a senior, who assumes the role of prayer leader, or imam, and begins the call to prayer (adhan). The call to prayer is delivered in Arabic but is translated here into English: God is the greatest! (Allah u Akbar) God is the greatest! God is the greatest! God is the greatest! I bear witness that there is no lord except God (2x) I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God (2x) Make haste toward prayer (2x) Make haste toward welfare (success) (2x) God is the Greatest (2x) There is no other lord except God (accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhan)

After the call to prayer, the students perform in unison the complete pattern of postures and words that comprise the prayer sequence, called a rak’ah, which in Islam is highly standardized. The sequence begins with worshippers

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standing up. Together the students stand and raise their hands to their ears, repeating underneath their breath “God is great!” (Allahu Akbar). They then cross their hands over their stomachs, right over left, and say quietly, “All glory to Allah” (Subhan Allah), followed by a recitation of the first chapter of the Qur’an, called the Surah al-Fatihah, or Opening Chapter. This surah, again translated into English, is as follows: Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds: Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, the way of those on whom Thou has bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath. And who go not astray. (Ali 1970, 1:2-7)

A series of additional postures follow from the recitation of this surah, each accompanied by a specific verse of prayer: bowing (“Glory be to my Lord, the Great!”), then standing (“Oh Lord, you are praised”), then kneeling prostrate with their foreheads to the ground (“Glory be to my Lord, the Highest”), then sitting upright (“God is Great!”), then prostrating again, sitting upright (“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah”), and then raising the first finger of right hand (“and that Muhammad is the servant of God and the messenger of God”). Each student then turns their head to the right and passes peace (“The peace and mercy of God be with you”), and lastly, peace is passed to the left with a turning of the head (“The peace and mercy of God be with you”) (accessed at http://muttaqun.com/salahframes.html). In addition to the morning assembly, students gather in the gymnasium after sixth period for afternoon prayer. In this way, Universal School ensures that all students observe the Muslim prayer schedule while at school. As one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the prayer schedule makes it binding upon Muslims to pray five times a day in accordance with a cosmological time schedule first laid out by the Prophet Muhammad. These prayer times are known as fajr (dawn prayer), zhuhr (morning prayer), asr (afternoon prayer), maghrib (sunset prayer), and isha (night prayer). It is not incumbent upon Muslims to pray in a mosque or with other Muslims. A Muslim is allowed to pray in any setting, with others or in solitude (accessed at http://islam.about.com/cs/ prayer/a/prayer_times.htm). But the keeping of the prayer schedule in school and the collective prayer experience among staff and students provides a strong sense of school community, fellowship, and group identity. It also serves the important symbolic function of transforming the school, twice daily, into a mosque. When the Morning Prayer is complete, students stay in their place to listen to the day’s announcements. They are then dismissed, grade by grade, to begin their day of classes.

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The hallways of Universal School are a drab shade of blue. Bringing them to life, however, is an abundance of colorful student artwork and poster projects. Walking down the halls one can see that these displays create a mosaic of American and Islamic themes. One hallway on the second floor is decorated with poster projects on such topics as “Marriage in Islam,” “Important Episodes in Islamic history” (The Battle of Kaibar, The Battle of Azhab), and “Great Muslims” (Omar al-Mukhtar, Mohammad al-Madhi, Mohammad Iqbal, Zainab al-Ghazali). Comingling with these posters are others representing American movies (“The Outsiders”), American authors (“Favorite Beverley Cleary Books”), guides to getting into the best colleges, and secular moral maxims (“You are responsible for your actions” and “The secret of getting ahead is getting started”). Each classroom is equally hybrid. One in particular juxtaposes posters of the American constitution and the history of the American flag with charts of the history of the Islamic world and the spread of Islam during the Muslim Golden Age. Universal School strives to provide a competitive secular education for its students. However, it is the provision of what teachers and administrators refer to as the “Islamic environment” that distinguishes it from other schools. Several features constitute the self-described Islamic environment of the school. First, religious norms are enforced and followed equally by staff and students. Daily prayer is of course not the least of these. But other religious norms are kept as well: Islamic dress codes, sex-segregated classes after the fifth grade, a ban on flirting and dating, and the provision of halal (religiously permissible) foods. These practices structure the school environment and define it as Islamic. Second, students take classes relevant to the Islamic faith and the preservation of Muslim identity. These are provided instead of the usual electives offered at public school, such as shop, home economics, and music. During these periods, children younger than third grade are instructed in the motions of prayer. Older children take Islamic studies, Islamic history, Arabic, and classes on the Qur’an. The 2005 to 2006 class schedule for eighth through twelfth graders is shown in table 5.1. Aside from the upholding of Islamic religious norms and the formal provision of courses relevant to the Muslim faith, the Islamic environment at Universal School is reinforced informally through the symbolic use of Arabic and the infusion of Islamic teachings into the secular curriculum. Though all courses are taught in English, Arabic (the lingua sacra of Islam) is routinely used when students and faculty greet one another (“salaam a malaykum”), accord praise (“ma’shallah”), or refer to the future (“in’sha’allah”). As a constant feature of school life, the use of Arabic expressions such as these take on a symbolic function and define the social space as an Islamic space. Islam finds its way into the secular curriculum through attempts to discipline students and keep classroom order. This is significant because in doing so they reinforce the idea that the Muslim identity, at least in the context of

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Computers MWF. Writing/Grammar T.Th.

Islamic Studies T.Th.F. P.E. MW

Arabic

Writing/Grammar T.Th.F. Quran MW Lunch

Recess

Physical Science

History Pre-Algebra Algebra

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

Lunch 1

Lunch 2

6th

7th 8th

Arabic Algebra I Geometry

World History

Recess

Lunch

Writing/Grammar MWF Quran T.Th. P.E. T.Th. Computer MWF

English

Islamic Studies

Biology

Arabic Geometry Computers MWF Writing T.Th.

Islamic Studies

Recess

Lunch

P.E. MWF Quran T.Th.

English

Algebra II Computer T.Th. Writing MWF

American History

Chemistry II Chemistry I

AP English English Honors English Arabic Sociology Islamic Studies

Recess

AP Calculus Computer T.Th. P.E. MWF Journalism T.Th. Pre-Calculus Algebra II Consumer Math Computer T.Th. AP Biology Physics Physiology Writing/Grammar MWF Quran T.Th. Lunch

AP History AP Geography Islamic Studies

AP History AP Geography Islamic Studies AP Physics AP Calculus Computer T.Th. P.E. MWF Journalism T.Th. Pre-Calculus Algebra II Consumer Math Computer AP Biology Physics Physiology Writing Grammar MWF Quran T.Th. Lunch AP Physics Recess AP Physics AP English English Honors English Arabic Sociology Islamic Studies

12th Grade Boys

English

11th Grade Boys

1st

10th Grade Boys

8th Grade Boys

Boys

9th Grade Boys

Universal School’s 2005 to 2006 Class Schedule for Eighth Through Twelfth Graders

Table 5.1

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Islamic Studies MWF Quran T.Th.

Writing/Grammar History

English

Recess Algebra I Honors Lunch Algebra I Honors Pre-Algebra Algebra I

P.E. MWF Computers T.Th.

2nd

3rd 4th

5th

Lunch 1

7th

Source: Author’s compilation.

8th

6th

Physical Science

Arabic

1st

Lunch 2

8th Grade Girls

Girls

World History

English

Recess Algebra I Honors Lunch Algebra I Honors Algebra I Geometry

Arabic P.E. T.Th. Computers MWF (B) Quran MWF (A) Biology

Writing/Grammar WF Quran M.T.Th. (Group A) Computers M.T.Th. (B) Islamic Studies

9th Grade Girls

P.E. WF Quran M.T.Th.

Geometry Computers T.Th. Writing MWF American History

Lunch

Recess

Chemistry I Chemistry II

Arabic Islamic Studies

Computer T.Th. Writing MWF Algebra II

English

10th Grade Girls

Writing/Grammar T.Th. Quran MWF English AP English Honors English Islamic Studies Journalism MWF P.E. T.Th.

Lunch

Pre-Calculus Islamic Studies Islamic History Recess

Arabic AP Biology Physics Env. Science

Algebra II Consumer Math P.E. T.Th. Yearbook MWF

AP History AP Geography Sociology

11th Grade Girls

Pre-Calculus Islamic Studies Islamic History Recess AP Physics Lunch AP Physics Writing/Grammar T.Th. Quran MWF English AP English Honors English Islamic Studies Journalism MWF P.E. T.Th.

AP Calculus Algebra II Consumer Math P.E. T.Th. Yearbook MWF Arabic AP Biology Physics Env. Science

AP History AP Geography Sociology AP Physics

12th Grade Girls

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the school, is essentially a moral identity—one that is achieved (rather than ascribed) and secured by right conduct. Classroom order is kept not by establishing models of “the good student” but by establishing, with reference to the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet, models of how to be good Muslims. For instance, Surah-49, titled Al-Hujarat, or “the Chambers,” addresses the manners to be observed by members of the Muslim community and is often referenced in class when students tease one another or talk behind each other’s back—what in the Qur’an is described as “backbiting.” In relation to such teasing incidents (common among high school boys especially), teachers at Universal School often repeat a well-known verse from Surah-49: “Spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other. . . . Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?” Islamic teachings also find a way into the secular curriculum when questions arise that give teachers an opportunity during class to offer Islamic perspectives. A science teacher at Universal School described how students often ask about the place of God in the creation of the natural world. In such situations, she likes to emphasize the compatibility of Islam and science. She explained, “You see the observations, you credit it where credit needs to be given and then you attribute it to God’s ultimate power.” Those responsible for teaching Islamic studies also teach secular subjects. One such teacher, a favorite among students, teaches high school English. An article in Time describes his response when his class read Romeo and Juliet: The girls asked, “Is it love at first sight?” He answered, “Yes. As Muslims we don’t do that. The difference is lust versus love; appearance versus knowing. Islam protects you from mistakes” (June 11, 2005). Aside from classes on Islam and the provision of an Islamic environment, Universal School shares the distinguishing features of other private schools. Central among these is a strong sense of school community that promotes a feeling of shared ownership among staff and students alike. It is common for both to describe Universal School as being “like a family” or “like home.” The relatively small size of the school is just one factor that contributes to this feeling. Another is that families of students often know each other from the mosque and regularly socialize with one another. Because much of the Bridgeview community is composed of extended family networks (a consequence of immigration policies that once favored the uniting of families), students typically attend Universal School with siblings and even first and second cousins. It is also common for students to have a parent or an extended family member working as a teacher or administrator. All of these factors contribute to producing a familial atmosphere that mirrors and realizes the community values that the school aspires to promote. These values express themselves in the warm and caring manner with which teachers and students greet one another in the hallways and treat each other in the classrooms. While this can sometimes feel constrictive for students (who sometimes want

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more anonymity) and faculty (who sometimes feel their authority is compromised by intimacy), the familial atmosphere of the school is seen as integral to Universal School’s mission.

“Characterizing” the Ummah: Global Diversity and Curriculum Development at Universal School The ummah is a fundamental concept in Islam that refers to the worldwide community of Muslims. It expresses the essential unity and equality of Muslims from diverse cultural and geographical settings. But despite what may be described as a unity of Islamic tradition based on beliefs (tawhid, or Divine Oneness; nubuwwah, or prophecy; and ma’ad, or eschatology), rites (arkan, or the Five Pillars of Islam), and ethical norms (adab), Islam has taken on diverse political, theological, and cultural expressions. And though Islam professes to be a religion that transcends these divisions, they still tend to determine the composition of Muslim communities, leading people to pray and participate in the activities of certain mosques and Muslim organizations and not others. But Islamic schools, because of their rarity, often draw together a diversity of Muslim families. The composition of Universal School, for instance, displays a high degree of national and cultural diversity—higher even than many of the other Islamic private schools in the Chicago area. While the student body is predominantly Palestinian (approximately 50 percent) and Syrian (nearly 20 percent), faculty and students come from families of Egyptian, Moroccan, Sudanese, African American, Indian, and Pakistani descent. There are even a couple of students who are children of Anglo-American converts. Given this heterogeneity, Universal School faces the difficulty of uniting a diversity of Muslims under the umbrella of a common Islam and a shared vision of Islamic education. Such differences are a reality in the daily life and operation of Universal School, where Islamic education, if it is to integrate the school community, must be defined to accommodate the diversity of families and students it serves. Importantly, these differences crop up not only across ethnically diverse families, but also between children—who were raised in America and typically speak English as their first language—and adults—who were often raised abroad and maintain their national cultural identity while in the United States. Cultural conflicts therefore occur across both national and generational lines. Though this chapter focuses primarily on the institutional discourse of Universal School and the universalizing vision of education that it promotes, this vision does not map neatly onto reality. Despite an emphasis on the universality of Islam, racial tensions, cultural tensions, status hierarchies, and the usual dilemmas of school social life still apply. Universal School relies on the vision of universality, however, to address these problems.

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At the nexus of cultural and generational lines of conflict is the debate over the relationship between religion and culture. Is dating prohibited by Islam or Arab culture? What does Islam say about women and sports, ideas of appropriate dress, the separation of boys and girls, marriage practices, birthday celebrations, and popular music? Just as many of these questions are central to American Muslim communities, they have also become immediate in the daily life of the school. For instance, the girls’ basketball team at Universal School has so far only been allowed to compete against teams from other Muslim schools in the Chicago area because certain Islamic dress codes and gender norms make mixing difficult. At the same time, the students want to compete with other teams at higher levels. In a Chicago Tribune article, Deborah Horan quoted one student saying, “It’s not like it’s a sin to play a public school. The problem is the males coming to the game” (February 19, 2006). The problem of “males coming to the game” raises all sorts of novel questions about the origins and specific details of dress codes and gender norms. Would it be okay for men to watch if the girls played in headscarves, sweatpants, and long-sleeved shirts? How much accommodation can and should be made for American culture? And, conversely, how much can American culture be expected to accommodate Islamic norms? Dilemmas such as these raise questions about the boundary between religion and culture, and they call into question the school’s sense of commonality. Disagreements over such issues as the use of scented oils, the position of the hands during prayer, marriage practices, and proper gender relations disturb Universal School’s attempt to promote a common Islam and forge a sense of Muslim community within the school. In order to avoid having to repeatedly confront problems of Muslim diversity, the tendency has been to teach Islam “just at the general level.” The current principal at Universal School, a mother of three whose parents came from India and who herself was educated at a Catholic school, contends that the strain of Islam taught at Universal School is one that is free of provincial baggage. She claims that certain features of “regional Islam”—arranged marriages or bans on women driving—are not part of the program. As quoted in a recent Time article, the principal said, “It’s a constant battle, separating cultural issues from religious values” (June 11, 2005).6 “Culture” for many at Universal School has taken on a negative connotation. Whereas religion is associated with “values,” culture is associated with “issues.” In this context, culture has become associated with all that is worldly and divisive, originating not in revelation but out of the contingencies of the human past. In a discussion about “cultural issues” with a graduate of Universal School, the student explained, “As Muslims, we don’t like the word culture.” Thinking of culture in these terms, many Universal School Muslims see the American experience as an opportunity to express a “pure” Islam; an Islam that is forward looking and liberated from the flaws of culture

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and history; and an Islam that is, in the words of Olivier Roy, “beyond any culture” (2004, 25). The main point is that cultural diversity presents itself as an obstacle to the formal integration of the school, particularly over questions of curriculum and curriculum development. After more than a decade of operation, Universal School administrators consider the school to be without an Islamic curriculum. While the tendency of the school has been to adopt educational materials published overseas—for instance, from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan—these materials are criticized for containing nationalist and culture-specific content that bears no relevance to the diversity of American-born Muslim youth. The principal explained, “It’s not like we have a ‘curriculum curriculum’ where you say, ‘Here’s this book. Finish this. Take a test. You’re done.’ No, you know, we do have books. We change the books every year. Because we’re never satisfied with the information that’s provided in them.” The former principal, an outspoken Syrian-born man who remains a central figure in school life, shared the same sense of curricular lack as he reflected on the challenges faced by Universal School. As we sat discussing the challenges faced by Universal School, he said, “So to me, internally those are the challenges. These stem from not having an Islamic studies curriculum that is authentic; that is rooted in the American experience; that is true to Islam; that is well developed. We don’t have that still.” National efforts by American Muslims to develop Islamic school curricula are ongoing and diverse, but they are united in their emphasis on values and character education. The 2004 and 2005 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) education forums in Chicago were headlined, “Islamic schools: Developing the Emerging Muslim American Character.” Conference papers at these events variously discuss the importance of building an “Islamic personality.” Nationwide, a burgeoning Islamic character curriculum, commonly referred to as the Tarbiyah Project, is being discussed. Until recently, the Tarbiyah Project was implemented at Universal School. The following is a statement from the opening paragraphs of this curriculum: Islam is founded on the principles of belief and righteous conduct. This connection between values and practice lies at the very heart of the Islamic way of life. Nevertheless, a crisis in values and character development exists [author’s emphasis] throughout the Muslim ummah today that is working to undermine the fabric of the Islamic spiritual, moral and social system. Lacking a clear moral compass, Muslims today find themselves marginalized socially, disoriented spiritually, and generally in a quandary about their role and responsibility in modern society. Without a proper understanding of the Islamic value system, there is little hope that the true goals, or maqasid, of Islam can be achieved. (Uddin 2001)

The word tarbiyah is derived from the causative form of the Arabic root rbw (to make or let grow, to raise, rear, bring up, teach, or instruct). The term

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tarbiyah, in contrast to the term ta’lim (teaching people knowledge), includes upbringing and raising people to have values and character (Starrett 1998). The Tarbiyah Project is thus a call to resuscitate awareness of the Islamic value system as a point of collective orientation, a reference for regrouping and rearticulating an Islamic character founded on the principles of “belief and righteous conduct.” Importantly, the turn to character education at Universal School—made evident in so many facets of school life and discourse—signals a shift in what is viewed as essential to the cultivation of Muslim identity. Whereas Islamic education traditionally emphasized the instantiation of knowledge (ta’lim) in the form of Qur’anic learning, character education (tarbiyah) emphasizes the primacy of virtue and righteous conduct. Such a shift represents a contrast between modern forms of religiosity and the classical conception of acquiring religious knowledge (Eickelman 1992; Lambeck 1990). Islamic identity at Universal School is conceptualized principally in terms of values and personal sincerity, not academic knowledge or scholarly training. As a response to intra-Muslim diversity, the foregrounding of character education locates Universal School on a spectrum of contemporary educational responses to the dilemmas of diversity and multiculturalism. Indeed, most Universal School educators would not consider themselves to be multiculturalists, either in the “soft” or the “hard” sense of what that might mean in the public school described in chapter 4 of this volume (Sarat). Instead, Universal School aspires toward a colorblind educational environment that treats all students equally, regardless of their racial, ethnic, or national heritage. Indeed, while imported curricula are acknowledged as too culturally narrow, Universal School is not looking for a curriculum that will “celebrate diversity” or be “culturally sensitive.” Rather than catering to the unique identity of students, Universal School simply strives to cast a wider net. Whereas liberal multiculturalists might aspire to incorporate an awareness of the racial, ethnic, and national diversity within the school, many Universal School teachers and administrators (though not all) regard the foregrounding of diversity as unnecessarily divisive.7 One of the history teachers, a young Moroccan man who recently led a group of senior boys on a trip to Mecca, noted, “It’s nice to recognize their national background but I don’t know if that’s going to do anything especially at a greater level. . . . But I think the fact that the religion of Islam is a universal religion is helping us with that. It’s not, ‘What kind of Muslim are you? Are you the Pakistani or are you this?’ The religion is about humanity. It doesn’t matter whether you are an Arab Muslim or an African Muslim.” Even theological diversity within Islam, expressed by the various schools of Islamic thought (for example, Hanafism, Malikism, Shafi’ism, Hanbalism, and Wahhabism), is overridden by the appeal to universalism. The history teacher continued: “The school doesn’t adopt one school of [Islamic] thought, our school, Uni-

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versal, doesn’t adopt one at the expense of the others. It just emphasizes the general, kind of the middle ground. Yeah. Just Muslim, non-Muslim, that’s it.”8 Without an established Islamic curriculum, the question of how to “Islamize” education at Universal School has increasingly been answered through the provision of an “Islamic environment” which functions both as a deliberate school culture as well as a kind of “hidden curriculum” (Jackson 1968). The enforcement of religious norms (dress codes, the separation of the sexes, a ban on flirting and dating, and the keeping of the prayer schedule), the provision of Islamic courses (Arabic, Qur’anic studies, Islamic history), and the informal infusion of Islam into the primarily secular curriculum coalesce to create this “environment.” The focus on creating an “environment” rather than a “curriculum” meets the challenge of diversity by leaving the question of Islamic education unstandardized and open-ended. Indeed, the emphasis on cultivating an Islamic space rather than an objectified idea of Muslim education (in the form of a curriculum) is consistent with the inclusion strategy of the school. The essence that binds this space together and defines it as “Islamic” is increasingly found in the moral and ethical standards of Islam, an expression of what the French political scientist Olivier Roy (2004) recently described as “ethical Islam.” As Oliver Roy explains, “There is definitely a link between the growing deterritorialization of Islam and the spread of specific forms of religiosity, from radical neofundamentalism to a renewal of spirituality or an insistence on Islam as a system of values and ethics [author’s emphasis]” (2004, 5). The emphasis on Islam as a system of values and ethics (such as the emphasis on “Islamic environments” over “Islamic curricula”) has been one way to manage an interpretive process that might lead (and sometimes does lead) to a crisis of interpretation. The quest for an “authentic” Islam at Universal School leads beyond particularity to an essence beyond culture. Islamic education at Universal School is about teaching students how to be good people, good Muslims, where the concept of “good” is believed to be universal, transcendent, and self-evident. The former and current principals at Universal School both link morality and values to the “core” of Islam and consider them to be “basic” to the Muslim faith. When asked about the various national and cultural expressions of Islam, the former principal noted, “Look at the cultures in those countries and Islam is completely distinct. From Kenya to Nigeria to Indonesia . . . and you have a totally, in a way, different Islam. I mean the only thing that brings it together with the rest is just a general core set of values [author’s emphasis]; but the way they go about it, the practice of it, a lot of things are different.” The prevalence of an “ethical Islam” was also made evident by the current principal when she answered the question of the aim of Islamic education: “It’s just really one [aim] . . . to make sure that our students are out there, in-

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volved, and just making sure that they are following Islam. Because that’s the basic code of values that we have [author’s emphasis].” Significantly, Universal School has largely decoupled knowledge of the Qur’an from the idea of a good Muslim. Though Qur’anic knowledge and Qur’anic instruction remains important among teachers and administrators at Universal School, it is seen as secondary to the instantiation of morality and the cultivation of character. As the science chair at Universal School said, Our purpose is not to have students who have memorized the entire Qur’an. That’s not the objective. . . . It’s not technical stuff about you have to learn so much of the Qur’an or they have to know so much of the Sunnah. It’s not that. . . . The purpose is really simple, just, you know, be good role models, be good practicing Muslims where you follow basic values about maintaining your family, taking care of each other, contributing to the community, helping the community to grow, be an asset to society and making sure that Islam is there helping to do that. Which is their duty. And that’s just the sense and at the basis of it.

“Family” and “community” are defined as the principal objects of moral concern at Universal School, and cultivating a sense of “duty” toward them is central to its mission. Though the values taught at the school are held to be universal, they correspond to an ethical domain described by the cultural psychologist Richard Shweder and colleagues (2003) as an ethics of community. Research on the cultural psychology of morality has associated this moral domain with a socially “conservative” worldview (Shweder et al. 2003; Haidt and Graham 2007). Through an ethics of community, the world is seen not as a collection of individuals but as a collection of groups. The purpose of moral regulation is to protect the integrity of the various roles and relationships—husbands and wives, children and parents, men and women— that constitute a community. As Richard Shweder and colleagues explain, “the ethics of community pertains to the discourse of obligations engendered through participation in a particular community. It is a discourse of roles and statuses and obligations in relation to other members of the community” (2003, 106). An example of this ethical domain comes from the college application essay of a female student at Universal School. When asked why she wanted to major in psychology in college, she explained on the application that it would help her to become a better wife and mother. This response reflects a conception of self that is constructed principally in terms of its roles and relationships to others. In contrast to an ethics of community, a student who saw the world principally in terms of the ethereal domain described by Shweder and colleagues (2003) as an ethics of autonomy would answer this question very differently. Such a student would likely describe their interest in psychology in a way that abstracted selves from their social roles and community relationships.

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Such a student might declare a psychology major so that they could learn “more about themselves” and “other people.” An ethics of autonomy has been associated in research on the cultural psychology of morality with a socially “liberal” worldview (Shweder et al. 2003; Haidt and Graham 2007). Through the ethics of autonomy, the moral world is made up of individual human beings, and the purpose of moral regulation is to protect the discretionary choice of individuals. Here, the values of freedom, independence, personal preference, and equality are emphasized, and group membership is seen first and foremost as an individual choice and a personal, rather than communal, responsibility. Foregrounding an ethics of community at Universal School makes practical sense. This ethical domain engages and responds to the dilemmas of intraMuslim diversity and the difficulties of establishing a sense of community in the wake of deterritorializing forces such as global migration. For Muslims who have arrived in the southwest suburbs of Chicago from all over the world, a stress on belonging and affiliation is crucial to the project of reconstituting a sense of community. Universal School, following in a long tradition of parochial schools, can be seen as a central institution in this process. Paralleling the struggle for solidarity among these American Muslims is the experience of many American social conservatives who feel that increasing plurality is leading to a loss of community. From the conservative perspective, liberal multiculturalists have championed this splintering of American society by emphasizing diversity at the expense of a common national identity. In the domain of education, this critique has led to a movement among conservatives to unite around one overriding mission: the defense of character education in American schools. Universal School has found common ground with this movement. It has come to use its discourses and resources, however ironically, to confront the special problems of Islamic education in the United States and reproduce the Muslim identity of its students.

Building Bridges: Universal School and the Character Education Movement An important goal at Universal School is to show the outside world that it has an ecumenical ethos and that it strives to cultivate exemplary American citizens. The emphasis on Islam as a system of universal values, therefore, is meant to appeal to America at large as much as it is to the diversity of Muslims within the school. For this reason, “Islamic values,” as they are referred to among members of the Universal School community, are discussed with outsiders as being equivalent to “American” and “Western” values. When asked whether the values taught at the school were particularly Islamic, the principal said, “The essential values are so, I guess so, I guess, what’s the right word? They’re just very basic simple values that tie into the core moral

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and ethical standards that every human being should have.” When asked the same question, the chair of the science program remarked, “What makes [these values] Muslim? Aren’t they universal? I don’t think they’re just Muslim. I think it’s something that all religions have and all people. I mean, but Islam reinforces these as well as the others.” The emphasis on human commonality at Universal School is motivated by a collective narrative within the school that sees diversity and difference as a threat to both the cohesion of the community as well as the community’s ability to garner support and legitimacy from the outside. That is, in a political environment that is sensitive about its Muslims, and in a communal environment that is Muslim but sensitive to its cultural differences, the emphasis on human commonality and community makes good sense. At the same time, appeals to moral universality, particularly for the sake of strengthening national solidarity and American identity, have manifested themselves in unique ways over the course of U.S. history. Today these appeals emerge in response to the American “social revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, which many argue extended the presumption of individual autonomy and the moral legitimacy of personal choice at the expense of traditional collective authorities, especially religious authorities (Livezey 2000). The rejection of “traditional values” during these decades has been interpreted by some as a triumph of individual freedom and choice at the expense of community. Phillip Rieff’s (1966) “triumph of the therapeutic,” Christopher Lasch’s (1979) “culture of narcissism,” Robert Bellah and colleagues’ (1985) “expressive individualism,” and Phillip Hammond’s (1992) rise of “personal autonomy” are just a few examples of the concepts that sociologists and cultural critics have used as platforms to decry the trend toward “radical individualism” and the “loss of community” in American society. At least some Islamic school educators in the United States seem to be finding these resources helpful. As one teacher noted on an Islamic educator’s listserve: “There are scholarly books that explain exactly why the American educational system has degenerated to the unacceptable levels of what we see today. . . . I invite all of you to read a 1979 book called Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. In Chapter VI, titled ‘Schooling and the New Illiteracy’ the author lays out in detail the history of the American educational philosophy.” Though the articulation of an “ethical Islam” at Universal School emerged as a response to intra-Muslim diversity, it has enabled the school to develop critiques of the American educational system that converge with the character-education movement. This convergence is particularly significant given all the diverse ways that the American educational system has been critiqued. These critical voices alone show that American society is not a monolithic mass, but rather a discontinuous and often contradictory set of voices. Universal School’s convergence with the character-education movement—as op-

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posed to other educational movements—reflects the “selective” and “segmented” quality of accommodation described in recent scholarship on immigration (Gibson 1988, 1997; Portes 1995; Portes and Zhou 1993). For the sake of conceptualizing the place of Universal School and the character-education movement within the diversity of educational movements in the United States, we can divide the pedagogical landscape in terms of “thick” versus “thin” notions of formal schooling. This distinction hinges on how comprehensive an individual or community feels a school curriculum should be—particularly whether moral education should be in or out. According to thin perspectives, moral education is best left to informal settings: between children and parents, siblings, and anyone else who participates in the life of the primary groups, particularly the family. This perspective argues that the goals of the school should be limited to the transfer of information and the promotion of skills and abilities necessary for the guaranteeing of equal opportunity and valued positions of employment. In contrast, thick perspectives of education see the school as connected to the home and the community and therefore continuous with their function as sites of moral instruction. From the thick perspective, formal schooling should be oriented not just towards the transfer of information, but more importantly, it should be oriented towards the transformation of the “whole child.” Within thick notions of formal education in the United States, several modes of instruction exist. Cognitive development, values clarification, multicultural citizenship education (see Banks, chapter 8, this volume), and education for character are just some examples.9 The purpose here is not to describe each of these modes but merely to point out that each carries a special understanding of the nature of the moral domain, the child’s relationship to that domain, and the proper means of encouraging moral development. Universal School’s emphasis on Islam as a system of values that are universal, transcendent, and self-evident resonates most strongly with the assumptions of the character-education mode. It is this resonance that has served as a bridge between them. Just four years ago, Universal School made a switch from the fledgling Tarbiyah Project to the Character Counts! Curriculum, which is used in many private and public schools across the country. The Character Counts! Coalition was initiated by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in 1992 and is now possibly the most widely used character-education framework in the United States. Inspired by the problem of moral decline in America and the need to teach values to the young, this coalition has affirmed six “core ethical values rooted in democratic society” that “transcend cultural, religious, and socioeconomic differences.” According to the program’s website, the Character Counts! Curriculum “is a non-profit, non-sectarian, non-partisan charactereducation framework that rests on the six pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship” (Character

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Counts!). In 1999 the Character Counts! Coalition formed a national partnership of over three hundred different organizations, including church groups, teachers’ and principals’ unions, youth organizations, charities, and foundations. Together these organizations claim to reach an estimated forty million American students and are “united in one overriding mission: strengthening the character of America’s youth” by “integrating character education into new and existing educational programs” (Character Counts!). As its website says, “The Coalition works to overcome the false but surprisingly powerful notion that no single value is intrinsically superior to another; that ethical values vary by race, class, gender and politics” (Character Counts!). In addition to their appeal to a certain form of ethical universalism (much like educators at Universal School), the site also makes the thick perspective of education explicit: “It just makes sense to teach young people right from wrong, in the classroom, living room and locker room. We want to be surrounded by good people, people we can trust to make decisions according to principle rather than expediency or personal preference. After all, what are education, coaching and child rearing supposed to be about? Developing good people who can live healthy, happy lives of purpose?—or just clever people who can pass a ball or a test?” (Character Counts!). When asked how the switch to the Character Counts! Curriculum made sense from an Islamic perspective (aside from the practical benefit of it being fully standardized), the English chair and head of the Tarbiyah committee at Universal School explained, We’ve adopted the program available in public schools and then we’ve put an Islamic twist to it where we teach the same values but then we just give them the Islamic perspective of how this is common with Islam as well. So rather than teach to the students, which we already do, that this is an Islamic value but it’s also an American value, now we’re doing it the other way around also, to complement that, to say, “This is an American value. But you know what? It’s an Islamic value too. It’s one and the same.”

Teachers at Universal School describe the Character Counts! Curriculum as a framework for Islamic moral pedagogy, and they express enthusiasm over the results. The curriculum makes itself apparent through media such as inspirational posters (“Honesty: 1. Being truthful to others; 2. Being truthful to yourself; 3. Doing what’s right regardless of who’s around; 4. Being someone others can trust”), monthly assemblies that address a particular “value of the month,” and a system of rewards for virtuous conduct. “Caught Being Good” is one such system. When a teacher sees a student or students acting virtuously, they give them tickets that can be traded in for gifts such as pencils, rulers, and other school supplies. At the end of each month, the student with the most tickets is announced the winner of a character award. One

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teacher likened the Character Counts! Curriculum to a skeleton: It provides a framework for moral instruction, she explained, but it’s the teachings of Islam that bring it to life. One Friday, a tenth-grade student by the name of Yusuf practiced the khuttba, or sermon, he would give that day to the elementary school during afternoon prayer. It was on respect—one of the six pillars of character. He stood in front of his classmates, opened with a recitation from the Qur’an, followed it with an English translation, and began his sermon. Yusuf spoke specifically about the importance of showing respect to parents, teachers, and elders. As is typical of Muslim sermons, Yusuf based his lesson on quotes from the Qur’an and the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet), which are endowed with enormous authority among Muslims. “Why is it important to respect one’s teachers and elders?” Yusuf asked his classmates. “Listen to this Hadith.” He quoted, “He who does not respect our elders or venerate our learned people, does not belong with us.” Yusuf drew a connection between the Hadith and an expression he’d heard growing up. “Whoever is older than you by one day is more knowledgeable then you by one year.” His classmates laughed. The teacher encouraged them to listen and to support their “brother.” Still pretending to be in front of an elementary school audience, Yusuf continued how young children only think of themselves. “You only think of yourselves and what your parents can do for you, what they can buy for you. But you should respect your parents!” He reminded his audience of the well-known Hadith: “Respect Allah and then your parents.” He exclaimed, “See! Parents are next in importance to Allah. Remember that! You must show your parents respect.” As an example of disrespect, Yusuf described speaking with a raised voice. “One should speak quietly to elders,” he admonished them. Describing his own lack of respect as a child, he quoted to the class what his father used to tell him: “A raised voice sounds like the voice of a donkey!” Citizenship, another of the six pillars of character, is taught through a variety of activities, the most important of which involve outreach and volunteer work. Through programs at Universal School students have opportunities to help the homeless, perform street cleanup in the surrounding neighborhood, and assist the elderly. A recent survey of Universal School juniors and seniors found that 61 percent of male and 38 percent of female students were involved in volunteer work at least once a month.10 Democratic citizenship is also encouraged through the school’s participation in the “Get Out the Vote” program. Though many are likely to be skeptical of the degree to which Islamic private schools teach democratic values—for instance, voting, church-state separation, and majority rule—data indicate that they are. The same survey found that students strongly believed in the importance of voting (89 percent of males and 97 percent of females), personal freedom (91 percent of males and 96 percent of females), religious freedom (91 percent of males and 98 percent of females), and the value of a secular

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government (70 percent of males and 73 percent of females). And when asked whether the principles of Islam obligate Muslims in America to respect the laws and constitution of the United States, students answered strongly in the affirmative (89 percent of males and 96 percent of females). The education at Universal School fits well with more conservative conceptions of American character that emphasize the centrality of religion in forging communal bonds, strengthening social responsibility, and promoting democratic values. It is ironic that Muslims and Christians in this country are being discussed as increasingly different from one another—through theses like political scientist Samuel Huntington’s (1996) “clash of civilizations”— when some of them are looking more similar. When it comes to public education, many American Muslims critique the same ills as Evangelical Christians. The exclusion of religion, neutrality on abortion politics, tolerance of homosexuality, and a preference for sex education over abstinence training are seen by both groups as contributing to a general lack of moral and intellectual substance in schools. And the consequence, these groups maintain, is premarital sex, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and school violence. In contrast to the rhetoric of liberal multiculturalists, who want to structure education around the virtues of open-mindedness and tolerance for diversity, conservatives want to structure education on the basis of a moral common denominator. Value-based education and greater participation by schools in the development of the whole child, they argue, will promote moral children and the building of strong, inclusion-oriented communities that transcend parochial differences.

Recognition Through Inclusion: Justifying the Particular Through the Universal The convergence of Universal School with the character-education movement shows that the lines of conflict assumed by the “culture wars” worldview have given way to other more numerous battle lines. Whereas religion and ethnicity once represented the dominant lines of conflict, these groups now show themselves to align and diverge on a broad range of issues: abortion, childcare, affirmative action, gay rights, and, in this case, conceptions of education. In the midst of these shifting lines of likeness and difference, the segmented and selective character of accommodation comes into relief. Immigrant groups are not simply cast into the American mainstream. They are careful and conscious agents who make decisions about what they will and will not accommodate in host societies (Gibson 1988, 1997; Portes 1995; Portes and Zhou 1993). The selective character of adaptation reveals the agency that these populations possess while highlighting diversity and disjuncture within American society itself. The question is not simply, “What in America will immigrants accommodate?”; it is simultaneously, “Which America will they accommodate?”

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It might seem counter-intuitive to those who think of Muslims as a politically disenfranchised minority to read that some are accommodating educational trends that attempt to get beyond diversity. Why would Muslims seek to protect their particular identity claims by foregrounding an inclusion agenda over one of recognition? Why not stress the right of Muslims to express their unique beliefs and practices? Other Muslim groups are doing just that. Somali Muslims in a Maine public school are struggling for Islamic religious norms to be recognized (Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume). John Bowen discusses the fight of Muslims to retain symbols of religious identity under French civic republicanism (chapter 7, this volume). And yet Muslims at Universal School are jumping headlong into perhaps one of the most homogenizing and universalizing agendas the American educational market has to offer. Why? There are a number of reasons. First, Muslims at Universal School find their own cultural differences troubling, and in the character-education movement they have found a shared desire to transcend difference and gather people into community with one another. Second, both groups have strived to overcome cultural tensions by emphasizing “universal values” and character education. Third, Universal School and the character-education movement share a thick perspective of schooling, one in which the school is seen as continuous with the family and the larger community, and where education aims at the transformation of the whole child. We have also seen that the values emphasized by these two groups cluster in the ethical domain described by the cultural psychologist Richard Shweder and colleagues (2003) as an “ethics of community”—a domain that principally has to do with forging a sense of duty and obligation to the roles and relationships that promote collective harmony. Lastly, and as a result of all these reasons, Muslims at Universal School and American social conservatives both criticize public schools for being dominated by radical individualism, excessive freedom, and a lack of moral supervision. As much as there is logic behind Universal School’s assimilation to the character-education movement, there are ironies and inconsistencies stemming from the very differences that both seek to transcend. Indeed, to be Muslim is to be something distinct and particular. Though Universal School voices socially conservative values in the domain of education, social conservatives are the people who are most likely to critique these schools for being alien and un-American. Indeed, the increased treatment of Islam as essentially “other” to American society (brought on by 9/11, the wars in the Middle East, and the framing of these events through the perspective of a “clash of civilizations”) pits social conservatives against one another, even as they reference universal values and the importance of commonality—perhaps even because they reference these things. Furthermore, although Muslims at Universal School would not consider themselves liberal multicultur-

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alists, liberal groups are most likely to come to their aid by appealing to the values of diversity, open-mindedness, and protection of the vulnerable—the same values they would use to defend the individual rights of gays and lesbians, pregnant women who choose abortion, and teens who are sexually active. The convergence of diverse socially conservative communities around the idea of universal values and character education raises other ironies and inconsistencies. Take for example the topics of abortion and gender relations. Though abortion is considered a sin among Christians, especially Catholics, some Muslims would argue that abortion is only sinful after the first forty days of pregnancy, at which time, according to the Qur’an, Allah breathes life into the developing fetus, changing it from inert matter into a living being. Catholics and Muslims may ground their disdain for abortion in the same values (respect for life and protection of the vulnerable), but the beliefs and practices that ground and actualize these values are often both nonnegotiable and incommensurable. The same can be said of gender relations. Indeed, few social conservatives would disagree over the importance of modesty and the value of honoring perscribed gender roles. At the same time, some Muslim beliefs—for example, that men and women should be kept separate, that they should not shake hands with one another or be left together in private if not married, that marriages should be arranged or codecided on by parents, that dating and flirting are impermissible, and that a woman’s body, including her hair, should not be exposed to men outside the family—are not likely to be shared by most other American conservatives, even as they claim, again, to transcend difference through universal values. Though both Universal School and the character-education movement rely on a discourse that abstracts values from the particular beliefs and practices that define cultural and religious identities, scholarship has persuasively shown that identity and morality are interdependent (Taylor 1989; MacIntyre 1984). The particularities of identity, it seems, are what make character realizable in the first place. James Davison Hunter, a social theorist and critic of the character-education movement, argues that the appeal to an inclusive moral vocabulary among character educators is paradoxical. He calls it “the paradox of inclusion” and describes it thus: Against the tide of fragmentation and disintegration in our culture is a wellmeaning effort to capitalize on what habitus remains by creating an inclusive moral vocabulary that is shared by all. But to implement this strategy, the moral education establishment obliterates the differences of particular communities and creeds and empties morality of its substance and depth. In so doing, it renders itself incapable of accomplishing the very ends it has set for itself. Intending to deepen innate moral sympathies and even build character, moral education takes shape in ways that make that impossible. (2000, 225)

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Universal School has appropriated a curriculum and a way of talking about values that explicitly downplays the connection between identity and character development. At the same time, it is able to make this connection daily, protecting itself from the paradox of inclusion, because it enjoys a unique privilege: the privilege of private schooling. Though private schools are often places where groups perpetuate distinct communal identities, they are also places where groups have a privileged space to pursue inclusive, universal visions of education. As a private school, Universal School is able to structure its educational environment in accordance with Islamic religious norms. At the same time, exclusivity and isolation permit it to pursue universality without betraying the substance of Islam or infringing on the identity claims of non-Muslims. The privilege of Universal School, then, is that it can be as universalistic as the character-education movement and as particularistic as it needs to be to preserve the Muslim identity. In other words, privilege has made possible what might be construed as its own “universal particularism.” As the stories of Muslims in Maine (Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume) and in France (Bowen, chapter 7, this volume) suggest, Muslims without access to Islamic private schools are less likely to adopt the language of inclusion and commonality when it comes to questions of education. Whether in Maine or in France, Muslims attending public schools have to struggle for their right to wear the headscarf, practice daily prayer, and observe Islamic gender norms. They have to struggle to be Muslim. Perhaps to the chagrin of the Character Counts! Coalition, Universal School’s self-described success with the Character Counts! Curriculum is likely a function of the school’s grounding in the Islamic faith. In the protected environment of the school they can enforce Islamic dress codes, segregate classes by gender, and make Islamic studies and Arabic courses compulsory—which is to say that they can spend less time struggling to be Muslim and more time promoting high academic achievement and a competitive learning environment. Though the promotion of high achievement is nothing new for private schools, their status as symbols of resistance against common visions of education might be shifting. Universal School’s emphasis on integration and commonality suggests that private schools may be occupying a new position of resistance in response to a new multicultural America. Where the recognition of diversity has become compulsory in many public schools, common visions of education may increasingly be the purview of private parochial schools. Universal School and the public school in Lewiston, Maine, described by Heather Lindkvist (chapter 6, this volume) provide a telling contrast. Whereas the Maine school has become a publicly funded experiment in diversity, Universal School has become a privately funded experiment in ecumenicalism. An observation made by the education researchers Anthony Bryk, Valerie Lee, and Peter Holland in their seminal work on Catholic Schools lends more evidence to this new trend in American educa-

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tion. They write, “Although the common school ideal inspired the formation of American public education for over one hundred years, it is now the Catholic school that focuses our attention on fostering human cooperation in the pursuit of the common good” (1993, 11). The story of Universal School is not the story of Catholic Schools, and yet both stories indicate the emergence of a new chapter in the history of private schooling—a chapter that responds to a new and more diverse America. Rather than shielding communal identities from the assimilative force of the common-school agenda, private schools may now be guarding identities from the dilemmas of diversity and the ambiguities of cultural and religious pluralism. In the context of the private school, the dream of wholeness can be had through the idiom of particularity and among students who share a common identity. In these contexts, inclusive moral vocabularies are less likely to undermine the identity-based foundations of character or threaten the right of others to preserve their own distinctive way of life. In merging with this new trend in American education, Muslim teachers and administrators at Universal School have appropriated a powerful voice of resistance (drawing on moral concepts familiar to all social conservatives) that is at once quite germane to the American experiment and critical of where that experiment might be headed.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

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Here, the term identity politics refers to political action aimed at advancing the interests of members of a group supposed to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity. This term has been used principally in the United States since the 1970s. In contrast to the emphasis by recent theories of globalization on “deterritorialization” (Roy 2004) and the global production of locality (Appadurai 1996), this chapter emphasizes both the continued relevance of the nation-state in the production of diasporic localities as well as the realities of “reterritorialization.” Islamic private schools in the United States have decidedly American characteristics (rather than simply global ones). They stand as proof that Muslim immigrants are making a home of America. “Immigrant Muslims,” arriving from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, are to be distinguished here from “indigenous,” or African American, Muslims. Because the historical narrative of immigrant Muslims is tied to racialized stereotypes of “Muslims,” African American Muslims, ironically, are often protected from these stereotypes by being black. In connection with this distinction, it should be noted that Islamic schools have a deeper and more varied history in the United States than is addressed in this chapter. The first Islamic private schools were the Clara Mohammad schools of the Nation of Islam, which emerged in the early 1970s and continue to exist as a largely distinct Islamic schooling movement.

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4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

A more extended history of the Bridgeview mosque, particularly the tensions between these different immigrant groups, can be found in Chicago Tribune article by Noreen S. Ahmed (February 8, 2004). Universal School and Aqsa School, though neighbors, consider themselves to be entirely separate institutions, and their visions of education are markedly different. Universal School educators are likely to consider Aqsa School less religious and more “cultural” because the school is also almost exclusively comprised of Palestinian students. Quote of Universal School principal comes from Michaels, Marguerite. 2005. “The Model School, Islamic Style.” Time Magazine. June 11. 2005. Though the majority of teachers at Universal School have no problem teaching Islam at the “general level,” some would prefer more attention on the different theological schools of thought. Some of these same teachers even advocate the teaching of Islam from one school of thought in particular, arguing that without this grounding in a theological tradition, Islam threatens to lose coherence. Still, they acknowledge the difficulty of selecting one school of thought over another in the midst of such a diverse body of students. Importantly, two of the other schools in the Chicago area, which are primarily Indian and Pakistani in composition, have deliberately decided to teach Islam from within the Hanafi school of thought. These schools prioritize particularity within Islam and ground Islamic teaching in a specific theological tradition. See Johannes van der Ven’s book, The Formation of the Moral Self (1998), for an extended discussion of the “modes of moral pedagogy.” The statistics presented here come from a larger survey conducted by the “Islamic Adaptations Project,” which is under the supervision of Richard A. Shweder and supported by the Russell Sage Foundation. The discrepancy in volunteering between boys and girls is likely a result of girls being more responsible at home and less likely, especially at high school age, to be free to participate as active volunteers outside the Muslim community.

References Ali, Yusuf A. 1970. The Illustrious Qur’an. Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Bryk, Anthony S., Valerie E. Lee and Peter B. Holland. 1993. Catholic Schools and the Common Good. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Character Counts! n.d. Home page. Accessed at http://www.charactercounts.org/ backgrnd.htm. Character Education Partnership. 1998. “Mission Statement.” Character Educator 6(2): 3. Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 2001. The Mosque in America: A National Report. Washington: Mosque Study Project.

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Cristillo, Louis F. 2004. “‘God Has Willed It’: Religiosity and Social Reproduction at a Private Muslim School in New York City.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. Damon, William, editor. 2002. Bringing a New Era in Character Education. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press. Eickelman, Dale. 1978. “The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and Its Social Reproduction.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20(4): 485–516. ———. 1992. “Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies.” American Ethnologist 19(4): 643–55. Eickelman, Dale, and James Piscatori. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Gibson, Margaret A. 1988. Accommodation without Assimilation: Sikh Immigrants in an American High School. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ———. 1997. “Complicating the Immigrant/Involuntary Minority Typology.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 28(3): 431–54. Haidt, Jonathan, and Jesse Graham. 2007. “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize.” Social Justice Research 20(1): 98–116. Hammond, Phillip E. 1992. Religion and Personal Autonomy: The Third Disestablishment in America. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Hefner, Robert W., and Muhammad Q. Zaman, editors. 2007. Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Hunter, James D. 2000. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York: Basic Books. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jackson, Phillip. 1968. “Life in Classrooms.” In Teaching and Learning in the Primary School, edited by Andrew Pollard and Jill Bourne. London: Routledge. Josephson, Michael. 1997. “‘Why Be Ethical?’ The Role of Principle, God and SelfInterest.” Precourse reading materials, Character Counts! Character Development Seminars. Marian Del Rey, Calif.: Josephson Institute. Kadi, Wadad, and Victor Billeh, editors. 2007. Islam and Education: Myths and Truths. Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press. Krupa, Greg. 2005. “Metro Islamic Schools See Enrollment Surge.” Detroit News. March 14, 2005. Accessed at http://www.groupsrv.com/religion/about107250 .html. Lambeck, Michael. 1990. “Certain Knowledge, Contestable Authority: Power and Practice on the Islamic Periphery.” American Ethnologist 17(1): 23–40. Lasch, Christopher. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Livezey, Lowell W. 2000. “The New Context of Urban Religion.” In Public Religion and Urban Transformation, edited by Lowell W. Livezey. New York: New York University Press. MacIntyre, Alisdair. 1984. After Virtue. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.

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Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Portes, Alejandro. 1995. “Children of Immigrants: Segmented Assimilation and its Determinants.” In The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship, edited by Alejandro Portes. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Portes, Alejandro, and Min Zhou. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and its Variants Among Post-1965 Immigrant Youth.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530: 74–98. Rieff, Phillip. 1966. Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. New York: Harper and Row. Roy, Olivier. 2004. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press. Sachs, Susan. 1998. “Muslim School in US: A Voice for Identity.” New York Times, November 10, 1998. A1. Sanders, James W. 1977. The Education of an Urban Minority: Catholics in Chicago, 1833–1965. New York: Oxford University Press. Shweder, Richard A., Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra, Lawrence Park. 2003. “The ‘Big Three’ of Morality (Autonomy, Community, and Divinity), and the ‘Big Three’ Explanations of Suffering.” In Why Do Men Barbecue?: Recipes for Cultural Psychology, edited by Richard Shweder. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Starrett, Gregory. 1998. Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, edited by David T. Goldberg. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Uddin, Sommieh. 2001. “Implementing the Tarbiyah Project In Your School: Resources and Reasons Why.” Accessed at http://www.4islamicschools.org/pdf/ Implementation%20-%20Sommieh%20 Uddin.pdf. Van Der Ven, Johannes A. 1998. Formation of the Moral Self. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Company. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books. Winter, Nathan H. 1966. Jewish Education in a Pluralist Society: Samson Benderly and Jewish Education in the United States. New York: University of London Press Limited.

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6 THE REACH AND LIMITS OF CULTURAL ACCOMMODATION: PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SOMALI MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS IN MAINE Heather L. Lindkvist Diversity and tolerance are great words. . . . While taking care of the minority, don’t forget the majority. (Parent at a Lewiston School Committee Meeting, February 25, 2002) Tolerance is prescribed as a defense against enforced assimilation. . . . [The] government can avoid assimilation, that insidious cousin of totalitarianism, by respecting cultural differences. Increasingly, however, critics argue that “pluralistic” and “multi-cultural” education is neither pluralistic nor multicultural, but instead inculcates students in Western values. (Stolzenberg 1993, 582)

T

he rapid influx of Somali Muslims to a working class community in Central Maine (the “whitest state” in the nation)1 has challenged an outwardly homogeneous community to consider how to educate students who hold cultural views that diverge from the majority. In the public high school in Lewiston, Maine, divisive issues in social and political philosophy have been playing themselves out over such (as it turns out, only apparently) quotidian concerns as what to wear to school (or to gym class), what to eat, and where or when to pray. In addressing these concerns, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students have had to consider the question of what immigration implies about the free exercise of religion (and culture) and what it means to be an American in the early twenty-first century. This chapter looks closely at the experience of Somali students in the Lewiston public high school as a descriptive case study of cultural collision as well as of the process of legal and political accommodation in a liberal pluralistic democracy. Cultural collision has become a dominant trope in the discourse on cultural conflicts emerging in Western liberal democracies. The case of these Somali students demonstrates that such cultural conflicts reflect a process of contestation and negotiation rather than a collision.

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For American Muslims in general, September 11, 2001, forever changed the landscape of what it means to be Muslim in the United States. Racial profiling, verbal and physical assaults, and public demonstrations against mosques exacerbate the already difficult integration of Muslims into American society. For Somali Muslims, their skin color and their “Africanness” also contribute to the increased scrutiny of their everyday lives. As a relatively new immigrant community, Somalis must combat xenophobia and suspicions about Islam. Local reactions to the presence of Somali Muslims have been aggravated by the perception that their homeland is a “hotbed of terrorism” and the depictions of their “savagery” in the movie Black Hawk Down—particularly salient to the Lewiston community as two of the eighteen soldiers who lost their lives in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993, were sons of Maine; one was from a neighboring town. The letter written by Lewiston’s former mayor urging Somalis to “exercise some discipline” and to stop their migration to the city, as well as the call from white supremacist groups to “expel all Somalis from Maine,” have marginalized the Somali community further. Hate crimes, reported and unreported, perpetrated by locals and those “from away,” have made it increasingly difficult for Somalis to adjust to life in post-9/11 Maine. Some Somalis still fear that the federal government will round up all new Muslim immigrants and send them elsewhere. More than five years since the migration of Somalis to Lewiston, these concerns continue to influence how Somalis maintain their religious and ethnic identity as they adjust to life in Maine and in the United States. What constitutes mainstream American culture or national identity is highly contested today. Against a backdrop of national debates about immigration and education reform, anti-immigrant rhetoric emerges in seemingly simple matters such as dress. Included in this discourse are concerns about the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition (see Minow, chapter 2, this volume). These concerns are especially salient with regard to the schools, which are primary sites for inculcating American conceptions of “the good life.” In Lewiston, the marginalization and enforced assimilation of early waves of immigrants, such as the French Canadians, constructs contemporary approaches to the politics of recognition. This then informs local reactions to religious and cultural accommodations in the schools. The antiimmigrant sentiment that certain members of the host community have and continue to express toward Somalis belies concerns about the politics of redistribution (according to local residents, “Somalis reap the benefits of social service programs instead of Lewiston natives”), which affects the social acceptance of Somalis in the schools. The host community’s reaction to the Somali secondary migration corresponds to what Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Peter Roos, and Carola Suárez-Orozco describe as “the dominant image in the public debate” on immigration: “that of unstoppable waves of ‘aliens’ set on (ab)using U.S. social services, refusing to ‘assimilate,’ and adding to the

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crime and social pathologies of the American urban landscape” (1998, 181). In a post-9/11 world, certain conceptions of Somalis—for example, as potential “terrorists”—complicate matters further. As the demographic makeup of the Lewiston school system has shifted, several points of conflict that have emerged with regard to Somali Muslim students in the public school setting: wearing religious garb and participating in physical-education class. Both issues encompass Islamic principles and Somali cultural norms regarding modesty, gender, and the body, as well as how these norms diverge from mainstream American norms. The school system has also been forced to manage Islamic religious observances such as prayer and dietary requirements, which reflect significant forms of cultural reproduction for Somali Muslims as they adapt to life in the United States. This chapter draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2004, as well as continuous observations made as a resident of the Lewiston community. With particular regard to the schools, my research has included participant observation at school committee meetings, school-sponsored events, Somali-sponsored events held at the schools, and conferences related to students and the schools; informal discussions and formal interviews with district and school administrators, school committee members, the Somali community liaison, teachers, parents, and students; and several observations of an English Language Learners (ELL) classroom at the Lewiston High School.2 This case study demonstrates that the Lewiston School Department (LSD) and the high school have successfully balanced assimilation and accommodation.3 It shows that Somali Muslims residing in Lewiston have negotiated effectively with the LSD to informally or formally accommodate most of their religious and cultural needs, though not all accommodations are codified in school policy and not all requests have been met by the schools. The negotiations about religious minority practice in the Lewiston public school system reflect larger concerns about identity, morality, and inclusion within the host community and within the religious minority community. This case study examines the multiple levels of negotiation that emerge within the host community, between the host community and Somali Muslims, and within the Somali Muslim community that is struggling to define their cultural and religious identity in the American context. This time period was pivotal in the history of the Lewiston community and its schools as they sought to address the tensions that emerged when a religious and ethnic minority challenged community cohesion.

The Student Body Immigrants do not enter undifferentiated “American” schools. Rather they enter specific schools whose immediate contexts, histories, memories, and commitments shape their organization and practices. (Olneck 2004, 386)

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Public schools attempt to regulate the student body the minute that students enter the door, from time schedules to dress codes, from mandatory physical-education class to schoolwide discipline policies. When the student body shares the same cultural and religious values that inform school policies, including formal codes and informal guidance, regulation occurs with minimal effort. When the demographics of the student body change—often due to immigration or refugee resettlement—regulating the student body becomes a challenge, especially when cultural and religious values diverge significantly. Until 2001 the demographics of the Lewiston public schools reflected the homogeneity of the larger community: few ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities attended the schools. For example, the English as a Second Language (ESL) program relied on one tutor who worked with a total of forty students in the whole district.4 Between February and March 2001, approximately two dozen Somali Muslim students enrolled in the Lewiston schools. By the 2001 to 2002 academic year, the secondary migration of Somali refugees from Portland, Maine, and other areas of the country quickly—and radically—transformed the Lewiston community and its schools.5 By September 2001, over two hundred Somali students had registered in the public schools, with over fifty students entering the high school and the majority enrolling in ESL classes.6 Though total enrollment at the high school has only slightly increased since the 2000 to 2001 school year (from 1298 in 2000 and 2001, to 1354 in 2004 and 2005, and to 1446 in 2007 and 2008), the student population became more ethnically diverse in a matter of months. Suddenly children of French Canadian descent sat side-by-side with Somalis from a war-torn nation in the Horn of Africa. The Lewiston public schools reflect a microcosm of the larger dynamics at play between the host community and its new Somali residents, as well as the dynamics within the Somali community itself. Suddenly Lewistonians saw dark-skinned women, wearing colorful garbasaar (Somali customary scarves) or drab-colored jelabeeb (long cloaks; the singular form is jilbaab), wandering through the downtown, speaking a language they could not understand. In the public schools, teachers and students faced young Somali girls wearing hijabs (headscarves) or masar (head wraps) to cover their hair. With the initial enrollment of Somali students, local parents called school committee members and complained to teachers that school dress code prohibited “headgear”: if a Somali girl could wear a head scarf, then a local girl should be able to wear a bandana, a practice banned because the bandana symbolized gang affiliation. While teachers expressed concern over what might be perceived as school sanctioned religious practice, parents pointed to the head scarf (and continue to do so) as just one of the special rights of Somali students. For many local residents, the head scarf came to symbolize the recognition of cultural and religious differences that their immigrant French

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Canadian grandparents and great-grandparents had not received. The French Canadians who arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not reap the benefits of Lau v. Nichols (1974) or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect their rights in the schools (see Martha Minow, chapter 2, this volume, for a discussion of these legal norms). In 2007, a Somali student may freely speak Somali in the hallways of the high school; in 1937, French Canadian students were not allowed to speak French in the classrooms or in the halls. Teachers at the high school enforced a strict English-only policy of linguistic assimilation (Richard 2001). In contrast to these early assimilationist approaches to education, the LSD has recognized the cultural, religious, linguistic, and educational differences of its new Somali students.7 Though scholars often disagree on the representation, many social scientists depict Somalis as an ethnically and culturally homogeneous people inhabiting the Horn of Africa who “speak the same language, respond to the same poetry, derive their wisdom (and their experience) from the camel economy, and worship the same God” (Laitin and Samatar 1987, xvi).8 As practicing Sunni Muslims, Somalis customarily have maintained a syncretism of indigenous customs and Islamic practices; however, according to informants in Lewiston, the majority of Somalis in the diaspora maintain a more orthodox or “pure” form of Islam (see also McGown 1999; McMichael 2002; Tiilikainen 2003). In the secular West, Somalis struggle to define what it means to be a proper Muslim, and being a proper Muslim has become intimately tied to what it means to be a “good Somali.” Given their concerns about the influence of American culture on their youth, Somali parents are intent on preserving their cultural identity as well. When the school district hired a Somali community liaison to assist with interpretation and new student registrations in the autumn of 2001, district administrators seemed to believe that this liaison would be sufficient to assist in the adjustment of the Somalis to the school system. However, Abdi also served as an advocate for the Somali community, negotiating on behalf of the Somali elders and parents.9 Not only did he provide brief seminars to educate faculty and staff in the schools about the religious and cultural beliefs of their Somali students, he also demanded certain accommodations be made for Somali students, arguing that the tenets of Islam demanded a modification of daily practice in the school.10 However, as a cultural broker, the school liaison also informed and challenged Somali elders and parents when their demands interfered with the aims of a public education. As this case demonstrates, such cultural brokers maintain a powerful position as an interlocutor between two cultural worlds, a position which for Somalis in Lewiston has been as contested as other issues of conflict, such as religious headgear, participation in physical-education classes, and religious observances.

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Religious Headgear The school, as an institution of the state, must preserve order. One way that a school regulates student behavior is through formal policies, such as a dress code. As adolescents struggle to assert a sense of self, dress becomes an important marker of personal identity. However, not all forms of dress are appropriate for an educational setting. For instance, in the 1980s and 1990s, districts across the United States became increasingly concerned about gang activity in schools and instituted policies that prohibited gang insignia (such as bandanas), claiming that such dress interferes with the social and educational functions of the school. The LSD, like many school districts across the country, restricts dress as well as other civil liberties, such as speech, to ensure a safe and secure atmosphere in its schools. Local schools have the authority to establish dress codes as long as these policies do not interfere with students’ constitutional rights, such as the free exercise of religion.11 As R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, stated, “We certainly respect local school systems’ authority to set dress standards, and otherwise regulate their students, but such rules cannot come at the cost of constitutional liberties. . . . Religious discrimination has no place in American Schools” (U.S. Department of Justice 2004). While Acosta’s statement represents the constitutional support for students’ freedom to wear religious garb, in communities where such dress is foreign, it represents an affront to local conceptions of the moral order, especially the cultural production of American national identity. The hijab, or Islamic head scarf, worn by Somali and other Muslim girls represents the most recent example in the history of recognizing religious identity as marked by dress in the public schools (consider, for instance, the Jewish yarmulke and the Sikh kirpan). Following the anthropologist Bradley Levinson and the educator Margaret Sutton (2001), I suggest that negotiations about student dress code, a component of educational policy, demonstrate that policy making is a complex social process, reflecting contestations in the community at large about the politics of recognition (see Minow, chapter 2, this volume). As the dispute over the Islamic head scarf in the Lewiston schools reveals, a school dress code indicates a “moral discourse for regulating human conduct” (Levinson and Sutton 2001, 3), but whose conception of the moral order counts?

Hijab and Modesty Since its founding, the United States has grown from a nation of relatively few religious differences to one of countless religious groups. This expanding pluralism challenges the public schools to deal creatively and sensitively with stu-

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dents who belong to one of many or no religious faiths. (Lewiston School Department Policy Manual 2002)

According to the LSD policy manual, school officials and teachers must “sensitively” handle the practices and beliefs of a religious minority, even when castigated by majority parents for such accommodations. For many long-time residents in Lewiston, the hijab signifies resistance to becoming an American, rather than a symbol of devotion, respect, and freedom. When Americans consider the hijab, images of burqas or the niqab (the face veil) often come to mind. To such observers, the veil symbolically refers to oppressive regimes, radical Islam, backward culture, or gender inequity.12 It is a visible declaration of separation, making many Americans uncomfortable.13 Some members of the Lewiston community publicly object to such dress as un-American. Over the years, as I have walked down the streets with Somali women in forms of hijab, I have heard a number of local residents shout out, “Dress like us.” This stands out in contrast to the respect and acceptance accorded to Catholic nuns in Lewiston who demonstrate their commitment to God by wearing a habit. In contemporary usage, hijab refers to the institution of veiling or the actual veil itself, worn by some Muslim women to meet the Islamic emphasis on modesty. In the Qur’an, the word is nongendered; it means a separation, cover, screen, or protection. For many, hijab corresponds to a form of gender segregation as demonstrated by the separation of the Prophet’s wives from society; as the “mothers of the believers,” they were secluded from the public eye by their veils (Ahmed 1992). Today, disagreement exists regarding to what degree a woman should cover or if at all; ultraconservative (such as Wahhabi) Muslims contend that women should use the wives of the Prophet as their role model and wear the niqab, or face veil. However, the hijab, or religious head covering, transcends a mere article of clothing: hijab also refers to modesty, privacy, and morality, or to a woman’s comportment and demeanor. The Qur’an commands both women and men to demonstrate restraint and modesty. “Tell the believing men to lower their eyes and guard their private parts (farj). There is for them goodness in this. God is aware of what they do” (Qur’an 24:30).14 To “lower their eyes” refers to avoiding eye contact, especially between men and women.15 According to the anthropologist Fuad Khuri (2001), the body represents a source of shame for both men and women; the body must be covered, and men and women must limit social interactions in public to protect their chastity. For males, Islamic norms mandate that they cover from navel to the knees to guard their farj. The Qur’an does not specify how much a woman should cover.16 However, many believe that women should cover their hair because it is their most al-

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luring aspect and should only be revealed to their husbands or immediate family. Women must also cover from the wrist to the ankle in public. Tell the believing women to lower their eyes, guard their private parts, and not display their charms except what is apparent outwardly, and cover their bosoms with their veils and not to show their finery except to their husbands or their fathers or fathers in-law, their sons or step-sons, brothers, or their brothers’ and sisters’ sons, or their women attendants or captives, or male attendants who do not have any need (for women), or boys not yet aware of sex. They should not walk stamping their feet lest they make known what they hide of their ornaments. O believers turn to God, every one of you so that you may be successful. (Qur’an 24:31)

How a Muslim woman interprets this verse depends upon social, political, and cultural norms, as well as her own predilection. The wearing of the veil marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, customarily donned at the onset of puberty. Some Muslim girls and women choose not to cover their hair at all, while others wear a variety of styles and colors of the hijab, covering at least the hair and neck. To what degree a girl should veil and at what age are questions that Somalis and other Muslims deliberate, especially in a non-Muslim setting where both genders interact freely. In the schools, social pressures such as dating, premarital sex, and alcohol use reinforce Muslim parents’ desire to regulate the dress and behavior of their youth and to preserve specific gender norms that conform to Somali or Islamic values. In discussions and in formal interviews, Somali mothers and fathers have expressed concern over the deterioration of Somali religious and cultural values as marked by adolescent behavior and dress—perhaps a universal mantra for parents who find themselves dislocated from their home culture. The move to Lewiston represents a decisive strategy by members of the Somali community to regulate what type of social groups (for example, African American gangs) influence their children.17 By emphasizing Islamic values such as hijab (both as a form of dress and as a mode of comportment), parents hope to protect their children from the immorality of American society. Somali youth, trying to “fit in” to American culture, may consider adopting less modest forms of dress or styles that conflict with their ethnic and religious identity (see also DeVoe 2002; McGown 1999; Zine 2001). For example, African American hip-hop style enables Somali kids to conform to an American style that supports their newly defined racial identity in the United States (see also Forman 2001, 2002); however, Somali parents see such dress as un-Somali and un-Islamic. Dress, a powerful form of self-expression, represents one of the many intergenerational conflicts that Somali parents and children must manage in the diaspora.

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Somali girls have told me that whether or not a girl dons a head wrap, head scarf, or full cloak depends on the context. Girls have left home wearing a head scarf, only to remove it after stepping off the bus at school and don only a masar, or head wrap. Other girls have adapted the hijab to the American context by wearing the masar with a “hoodie” or hooded sweatshirt in order to cover the neck or by wearing a bandana as a masar, a violation of the school dress code. At the minimum, the majority of Somalis agree that an adolescent girl must cover her hair. Due to social pressure from parents and other Somalis, including peers, very few choose not to cover. In the mosque, all girls and women cover their hair in some form. Several girls comment that they wear the jilbaab in the mosque while only wearing a masar to school. A fight about clothing between two Somali girls at the Lewiston High School demonstrates the pressures that girls must manage and how peers police inappropriate dress. In the first week of school during autumn 2002, Zeinab, dressed in a head scarf, long-sleeved shirt, and long skirt covering her body, reprimanded Amal for dressing inappropriately based on Somali community norms. Amal, who wore a loose head scarf with American-style clothes that were described to me as “body hugging,” claimed that what she wore reflected her personal style. Verbal insults led to fisticuffs and subsequent suspensions from school. Amal’s family, especially her mother, had already been criticized for leniency in allowing their daughters to wear school clothing that does not reflect Somali community norms. Recurring conflicts and criticisms about the dress of Somali girls reflect the varying degrees of religiosity in the Somali community. To avoid similar criticism, Sahro, a single mother who moved to Maine from Georgia in the summer of 2001, explained: “I just purchased several headscarves and long skirts for my thirteenyear-old daughter. She never wore such dress in Atlanta. . . . But she needs to fit into the community here.” Somali girls, as the bearers and caretakers of future generations of Somali Muslims and their traditions, are central to defining Somali identity in the American context. The perceived “immorality” and “immodesty” of American girls only serves to reinforce Somali beliefs about controlling female sexuality. Community elders, concerned that the daughters of their community will become too American, use the tenets of Islam to regulate unwanted dress and behavior. From Seattle to Chicago to Lewiston, Somalis have noted that the increased concern with covering the female body reflects a conservatism or hyperorthodoxy that, until recent years, has not been maintained in Somalia (McGown 1999). In Somalia, the customary practice of wearing a head scarf indicated social status—that a woman was married—or economic status—that a woman was married to a wealthy man—rather than a statement of her religiosity. Over the years, Somali women have pointed out women swathed in the jilbaab, informing me that they did not wear such dress back home. Wearing the jilbaab represents a contemporary emphasis on Islamism,

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not a traditional style as interpreted by members of the host community (see also Akou 2004). In the diaspora, Somalis are reinterpreting or redefining what it means to be Muslim. In an interview with Aisha, a Somali woman in her late twenties, covered by a jilbaab, she claimed that “the civil war in Somalia is Allah’s punishment because we [Somalis] have not been good Muslims.” Khadija confirms Aisha’s claim: “Had we practiced what the Qur’an says, been good Muslims, we would not have the civil war.” This statement, expressed by many Somali women and men in Lewiston, echoes the sentiments of Somalis in Toronto and London interviewed by the scholar Rema Berns McGown (1999). Parents consciously and unconsciously communicate such beliefs to their Somali children as they reinforce what it means to be a proper Somali Muslim in the United States. According to Mohamud, a former imam in Lewiston, “In Islam, a woman should wear hijab. But she may say, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ It is okay for her because it is between her and God. He will deal with her on the Day of Judgment. [Whether she wears hijab] should not bother other people.” Mohamud’s sentiment echoes the comments that many women and girls have shared with me: “to wear the hijab or to cover is between a woman and God.” While the Qur’an states there is no compulsion in religion, thus supporting these sentiments about the hijab, informal mechanisms of regulation within the Somali community, such as those described above, ensure that girls do wear the head scarf and dress modestly. A brochure entitled “The Somali Community in Lewiston,” indicates the shift in Islamic dress practiced by Somalis in the diaspora. The school district’s Somali community liaison, Abdi, read the following to the Lewiston School Committee on August 27, 2001, to emphasize the importance of wearing the head scarf in the schools: “The wearing of long dresses and veils is a religious requirement that women take seriously. Girls are taught to cover their hair and other body parts that are considered sexually provocative beginning when they are as young as eight years old.” Younger girls often wear a khimar, referred by some as a hijab in practice, though many parents do not enforce the hijab until a daughter reaches puberty.18 Especially in the Lewiston secondary schools, the head scarf visibly marks a girl’s religious and ethnic identity. Somali girls and women in the diaspora express concern over drawing the gaze. Though the veil “protects” Muslim women from the unwanted gaze of men, paradoxically, in the diaspora the very article that serves as a protection also draws the gaze of non-Muslims; this is especially true since September 11, 2001, when the visibility of Muslims became more pronounced. I contend that Somalis experience a double “visibility”—being Muslim and being “black”—which negatively affects their integration into a community like Lewiston (for additional case studies, see Haddad 2002; Haddad and Smith 2002).19 For many Lewistonians and other Americans, the head scarf in par-

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ticular indicates the incompatibility of Islam with an American lifestyle. Somali women walking down the streets of Lewiston have been verbally assaulted with comments like, “Go back to where you came from.” Muslim women in other communities have experienced such remarks as well (Council on American-Islamic Relations 2002-2007; Wessler 2003). Given public sentiment about the Islamic head scarf, a question arises: how can school districts accommodate the hijab without violating principles of religious freedom?

Hijab in the Public Schools Schools reflect the historical and sociopolitical context of the locale in which they operate. For instance, while the United States maintains a separation of church and state that enables the free exercise of religion in school while prohibiting school-sanctioned religious practice, France maintains the philosophy of laïcite, a strict separation of church and state in which religion is relegated to the private sphere (and many non-Muslim parents in Lewiston adopt this view with regard to hijab). School, as a public space, must remain a religiously neutral space. In order to preserve laïcite, schools in France prohibit the head scarf in order to ensure religious neutrality (Bloul 1996; Bowen 2004, 2007 and chapter 7, this volume; Ewing 2001; Judge 2004; Vaisse 2004). In the United States, the establishment clause and the free exercise clause indicate a different interpretation of the separation of church and state. The establishment clause prohibits government endorsement or disapproval of any particular religion or religion in general as a measure both to ensure that government does not interfere with religion and that religious influences do not interfere with government. The free exercise clause allows for governmental accommodations of individuals’ religious practices but does not require it; instead, what is required is neutral treatment, subject to general rules. Similarly, the freedom of speech provision of the First Amendment prohibits governments—including schools—from discriminating against a religious viewpoint or private expression, but it allows the application of general, neutral rules governing private expression. To explain the distinction between the establishment of religion and the free exercise of it, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) produced guidelines, entitled Religious Expression in Public Schools, in 1998. With regard to religious garb, such as the head scarf, the guidelines state that, “Students generally have no Federal right to be exempted from religiously-neutral and generally applicable school dress rules based on their religious beliefs or practices; however, schools may not single out religious attire in general, or attire of a particular religion, for prohibition or regulation.” While donning a head scarf in a public school in the United States may engender debate, the law is quite clear: no public school may prohibit headgear worn for religious reasons (such as the yarmulke and hijab). While some

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teachers argue for separation of church and state (as schools are institutions of the state), the rights of the individual—at least of the student—to freely practice religion, even within the school setting, are protected. School administrators must develop reasonable accommodations without violating the establishment clause and without hindering a student’s free exercise of religion. The Lewiston case demonstrates the tremendous pressure placed on school administrators by parents and students of the majority group to ignore the demands of a minority group, especially when the accommodation suggests an imbalance of power in favor of the minority. The ensuing debate about the dress code came to symbolize larger issues about identity politics (or the politics of recognition) in the schools and in the community at large.

Revising the Dress Code in the Lewiston Schools We believe our community’s values are reflected by our students. The purpose of this policy is to establish a sense of appropriateness of dress as we prepare our students for life beyond graduation from Lewiston Schools. Students are expected to wear appropriate clothing that does not interfere with the educational process. (Lewiston School District Policy Manual 2000/2004)

From the point in time of the initial influx of Somali students into the Lewiston schools, parents of local students raised the issue of student dress, in particular the Islamic head scarf. During the 2001 to 2002 academic year and into the fall of 2002, the school committee examined the concern about special rights: a Somali girl could wear a head scarf to school, perceived to be a violation of the dress code, while a local girl could not wear a bandana. Public input at community forums, including the February 25, 2002, schoolboard meeting, showed the continued frustration parents felt about the perceived inequities of addressing the needs of Somali students in the schools. Each school allowed the hijab but handled the tension over special rights differently. The high school initially maintained an informal policy, allowing the head scarf in the school without codifying the accommodation. During a conversation with an administrator at the high school in the autumn of 2002, he indicated that if non-Muslim students complained about the headgear policy, they could choose to wear a hat, for instance, every day, all day, throughout the school year, just as a hijab must be worn. The bandana, however, could not be worn. A parallel discussion about dress and modesty emerged. From belly shirts to low-rider jeans to baggy pants exposing boxers, teachers considered the immodest dress of students to be a distraction from the real purpose of school: facilitating education. How to handle such revealing dress demonstrated the complexity of gender relations in the school: on one occasion, a male high school teacher complained that a sophomore student’s top was too

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tight and revealed too much of her cleavage. Uncomfortable with informing the student that her dress was improper, he asked a female colleague to speak to the student. School committee members also noted how adolescent dress revealed too much skin. Reflecting on one such conversation, the superintendent explained, “We [the school committee] felt that young ladies should not expose their bodies.” School committee members “were hearing [about] and observing student dress that was not appropriate for school. . . . Boys were walking around with pants hanging down, showing [their] underwear.” Austin Sarat (chapter 4, this volume) points to similar concerns in the Amherst school district. In order to handle the complexities of gender and unwanted dress at the school, the school-committee chair convened a special group on November 4, 2002, to review the school department’s dress code and to examine dresscode policies at other schools. In establishing this committee, the chair recognized “the need for more consistency and specificity in delineating the school department’s dress-code policy for K through 12.”20 This committee consisted of school administrators from the high school, middle school, and elementary schools; several school-committee representatives; and the student representatives who served on the school committee. The final policy was approved in March 2003. Prior to the Somali relocation to Lewiston in 2001, the Lewiston High School dress code indicated that “clothing, footwear, insignia or accessories that are intended to identify the wearer as a member of a particular gang are prohibited on school grounds or at school functions” (LHS Student Handbook 2000–2001, Dress Code, Section B). With regard to headgear, the policy stated the following: “Hats (headwear of any kind) are not to be worn in the building from 7:45a.m.–2:00p.m.” (LHS Student Handbook 2000-2001, Dress Code, Section E). Both sections support the prohibition of the bandana in the public schools. The revised dress code acknowledged the distinction between a hat and a religiously sanctioned head scarf, such as those worn by Somali girls, and expanded the definition of what constituted “headwear,” allowing exceptions for the hijab. In accordance with these guidelines, Lewiston High School modified its dress-code policy, adding several additional caveats.21 Any type of headwear—caps, hats, bandanas, hoods [author’s emphasis], helmet hats, or other type of headgear shall not be worn in the school building from the start of the first class to the end of the school day. The administration may make allowances for special days such as spirit week. Exceptions will also be made for medical or religious requirements [author’s emphasis]. Non-bandana style headbands for the purposes of holding hair back are appropriate. (LHS Student Handbook 2004–2005, Dress Code, Section E)22

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Though the revised section does not indicate what type of head scarf is permissible, the policy does indicate that Somali adaptations of the head scarf to the American context, such as wearing a head wrap with a hoodie over it, are no longer permissible in the schools. The material of the head cover also matters: Somali girls may not use the bandana as a head scarf as indicated by the clause, “non-bandana style headbands . . . are appropriate.” While the French have prohibited the head scarf in the public schools, French officials reviewed a proposal that Muslim girls may wear a bandana to school (Bowen 2007). In France, the bandana does not carry the same symbolic weight—a sign of gang affiliation—as it does in the United States. When the LSD and Lewiston High School revised the policy regarding head wear, they also added the following statement: Articles of clothing with displays that are sexual, vulgar, lewd or indecent, which create a disturbance, or include insulting words (e.g., racial/ethnic slurs), are not permitted. All clothing is to fit properly, be an appropriate length and should not be revealing. Clothing should conceal a student’s stomach, chest, and upper thighs. No underwear should show. Shirts and blouses that expose the midriff, that are sexually suggestive or revealing are unacceptable. Pants, skirts, dresses, and shorts will be clean, not unduly tight, not excessively short, not unreasonably baggy, or indecently revealing. [Emphasis indicates addition to the policy.] (LHS Student Handbook 2003–2004, Dress Code, Section C)

This section of the policy clearly resolves the concern with inappropriate (overly sexual or revealing) adolescent dress in the schools, especially in the high school. As a social institution, the schools are expected to socialize and regulate students’ behavior in order to inculcate beliefs and practices consistent with local norms. By explicitly stating how the student body should be covered, the school regulates student behavior that customarily has been managed by parents before the child leaves the house. As the superintendent clarified, “Parents were frustrated about dress as well. They were saying they could only buy certain clothes. The clothes that were available were hip huggers and things like that.” As a disciplining force, the school and its officials reinforce parents’ concerns about their children’s dress. I note that the revised dress-code policy supports the perspectives of both minority and majority parents. If students decide to resist the dress-code policy, they will either be given an extra-large T-shirt to wear (which could be seen as a modern form of the “scarlet letter”) or will be sent home to change.

“How is Hijab Different from the Bandana?” A veil is a veil and a bandana is a bandana. A student cannot wear a bandana. (Lewiston High School principal to public during a school committee meeting, February 25, 2002)

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At the Statewide Civil Rights Conference in April 2003, members of the Lewiston High School Civil Rights Team took up this issue in a panel entitled, “How is hijab different from the bandana?” During the panel, the Lewiston High School team discussed Islam, Somali culture, and the recent sociopolitical events in Lewiston while addressing the distinction between a head scarf and a bandana. The exchange between Somali students and the predominantly European American audience, which included a few immigrant students from Mali and Togo, suggested that prevailing notions about the hijab, as reproduced in the media and by their parents, informed the students’ assessment of whether it should be allowed in school. Rather than making claims about equity (for example, “I should be able to wear a bandana”), the students asked questions to try to understand the purpose of the hijab. In response to the question posed at the beginning of the panel, Najmo, a Somali student from Lewiston, explained, “You wear the bandana as a gang sign. It is fashion, not religion. The hijab came before the bandana. It is a symbol of Islam. It is a personal decision to wear hijab—though it also depends upon your parents.” This last comment indicates that parents can influence whether or not a girl covers and to what extent. Girls often look to their mothers for guidance, and their mothers often regulate what is acceptable to wear outside of the home. A European American female student in the audience asked Ali, a Somali student on the panel, “Why don’t guys wear the hijab?” He responded, “Guys do not need protection. We don’t have to cover ourselves from girls.” Najmo added, “We must cover ourselves to protect from men’s gaze.” Another female student asked, “Why do you hide?” Fatuma interjected, “The hijab is supposed to keep you modest. It is a form of protection.” She then asked, “Why don’t guys in the United States wear skirts?” Without waiting for a response she continued, “It is more comfortable to wear a hijab. I feel more comfortable when I wear it.” The Lewiston High School Civil Rights Team presentation reflected on the relationship between the hijab and the bandana in response to complaints from the community at large about the head scarf as well as to conflicts in the school about the material of the head covering. In 2002, a Somali girl attending the high school decided to wear a white and black bandana to school as a masar, or head wrap. Her teacher told her to remove the bandana as it violated school policy. As described to me by Somali and non-Somali students in the classroom, the Somali girl antagonistically said that her religion required her to wear a head covering. The teacher acknowledged that a student could wear the religiously sanctioned head scarf to school, but it could not be a bandana as it explicitly violated school policy. The Somali student called the teacher a racist and stomped out of the classroom. Members of the Civil Rights Team, who had been trained as peer media-

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tors, interceded in the conflict. They visited the classroom where the incident occurred, facilitating a discussion about the distinction between the head scarf and the bandana. As several Somali girls who moved to Lewiston from Atlanta explained to me, wearing the bandana as a head wrap became an adaptation to the American context and a way to integrate with the African American students at their schools (see also Birman, Trickett, and Bacchus 2001). Somali girls have incorporated cultural styles of dress from Somalia (such as the masar) as a way to adapt to the American context, maintaining their Somaliness in the face of assimilationist pressures. While I conjecture that the Somali girl wore the bandana-style masar to defy school policy, she did conform to certain Islamic values by covering her hair. This incident highlighted the need for a clear articulation of what counts as religious headgear. This raises the question: who decides what counts? While the Lewiston School Department resolved the conflict over the head scarf by remaining cognizant of civil liberties, other school systems have handled the religious accommodation less successfully. Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. (2004) demonstrates how perceptions of Islam in a post-9/11 world affect the acceptance of Muslim students in the public schools. At the beginning of the 2003 to 2004 academic year, Nashala Hearn, an eleven-year-old Muslim girl, wore her hijab to school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for three weeks without incident. On September 11, 2003 the school’s administration informed the student that she could not wear her head scarf to school because “other students were frightened by the hijab” (U.S. Department of Justice 2004, 1). The heightened anxiety at the two-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks contributed to this concern. The school also cited the “no hats” provision of the school dress code, indicating that religious headgear, like the hijab, is analogous to a baseball cap.23 Refusing to comply, the sixth-grade student continued to wear her hijab to school; the school suspended her on two separate occasions. The student’s parents appealed the suspensions to the school district, and a district administrative hearing committee upheld the disciplinary action. Nashala’s father initiated a lawsuit against the Muskogee school district, claiming violation of his daughter’s constitutional rights and Oklahoma law. In response, Muskogee maintained that the prohibition of the hijab ensured “school safety and discipline” and asserted that the Department of Education’s guidelines in Religious Expression in Schools required them to prohibit the sixth grader from wearing her head scarf, ensuring a “religious-free zone” in the schools.24 In November 2003 the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation of the case based on Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and found sufficient evidence to support a claim under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Department of Justice intervention sought to ensure that Muskogee would provide “an educational environment free of religious discrimination for its students”

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(Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. 2004 Complaintin-Intervention, 3). Rather than endure protracted litigation, the parties reached a voluntary agreement under a consent decree issued by the District Court on May 20, 2004, stating that the court will supervise the Consent Order for six years (Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. 2004, Consent Order, CIV 03-598-S). The Consent Order permitted Nashala to wear her hijab to school without fear of retribution. The order defined the appropriate hijab for school as “shall cover the hair, neck, and ears of the student, but not her face” (Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. 2004, Consent Order, CIV 03-598-Sp. 5).25 The order also required Muskogee to amend its dress-code policy for the 2004 to 2005 school year, by including a subsection entitled “Head Coverings.” In response to the case, the assistant attorney general stated, “The Department of Justice will not tolerate discrimination against Muslims or any other religious group . . . such intolerance is un-American, and is morally despicable” (U.S. Department of Justice 2004, 2).

Modesty: A Shared Value? Dress serves as one marker for assimilation. In the American popular imagination, to what extent an immigrant gives up cultural garments for American dress symbolically represents how “American” that individual has become. The hijab challenges this concept of assimilation or Americanization, as the head scarf clearly asserts an identity perceived to be counter to American Judeo-Christian norms. For Somali girls and their European American peers, the hijab explicitly differentiates Somali culture from American culture, Somali gender norms from American gender norms.26 For Somali girls who choose to wear it, the hijab ensures a social distance between themselves and Muslim and non-Muslim males. Given the concern about immodest and inappropriate dress among American teens, I pose the following question: To what norm are Somalis supposed to assimilate?27 Somali concerns about modesty and dress reflect similar concerns voiced by administrators, faculty members, and parents of the Lewiston school district and high school about attire for the student body at large. To what extent is this concern with modesty a shared value? While school officials and parents never commented on Somali concerns about modesty for their daughters in relation to their own review of appropriate or modest forms of dress in the schools, I conjecture that the striking contrast between a Somali student in hijab, long-sleeved shirt, and long skirt and a European American student in a tight belly shirt and low-rider jeans contributed to concerns about dress. Though not articulated in the same way, both minority and majority parents worry about what teens, especially young women, wear now. For Somalis,

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appropriate dress indicates cultural and religious values such as morality, commitment to and respect for family, proper comportment, and social distance between females and males. For school administrators and non-Somali parents, appropriate dress suggests the character of a student and ensures proper behavior and an atmosphere that enhances the learning experience of all students. By regulating appropriate dress in the schools, school administrators intend for students to learn how to don the costume necessary to succeed in “life beyond graduation from the Lewiston schools.” An exchange during one of the Lewiston High School panels at the 2003 Statewide Civil Rights Conference demonstrates that high school students also consider how Somali and American notions of modesty and appropriate dress interact. A white female high school student asked the Somali students on the panel, “Has coming into contact with American culture changed your values?” Aisha, a Somali high school student, emphatically replied, “No!” Zeinab, a nineteen-year-old Lewiston High School senior, demurely agreed with Aisha. The student then posed another question, “For the American girls, has being in contact with Somalis changed your values? For example, wearing belly shirts?” Lisa, a Franco American student at Lewiston High School, responded, “When I hang out with Aisha, I would not want to offend her so I would not wear something that would make her feel uncomfortable. I have been to Aisha’s house wearing skirts, but not fully dressed like Aisha.” Aisha commented, “It is her culture and religion. She does not have to dress like me.” A white male student from Lewiston High School added, “It is just as beautiful if a girl covers [wears hijab] or if she wears a belly shirt.” While these students recognize the importance of respecting various forms of cultural and religious expression, for some parents of children in the Lewiston schools allowing Somali girls to wear a masar or a hijab indicated an injustice due to the exclusion of their daughters’ rights to wear a bandana. According to the superintendent, the head scarf is a “dead issue” today. For the Lewiston community at large, the head scarf continues to symbolize difference and privilege. To this day, non-Somali parents still contend that their daughters should be able to wear the bandana to school. An administrative assistant at the LSD still receives calls about the bandana. “Parents call me up and say their religion requires their daughter to wear a bandana to school. I know these families. I say, what religion would that be?” Meanwhile, Somali youths and adults have had to adjust to mainstream American gender norms. A school administrator recently heard a complaint from a group of Somali men. “It’s your women,” the men said. “They do what they want. They dress the way they want. They tell men what to do. What are we going to do?” Chuckling as he retold the story, the administrator said, “Welcome to America!” (“Cultural Differences in Evidence at Montello,” Sun Journal, June 16, 2006, A9).

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Physical Education Our attitude—right or wrong—has been that they [the Somalis] have their rights and uniqueness and we have to accommodate that. . . . But this is America so there is equal responsibility to comply with our requirements in the school. (Lewiston School Department superintendent)

Another point of negotiation for Somali Muslims involves physical-education classes at Lewiston High School. With increased concerns about the obesity of American children, federal, state, and local educational organizations encourage student participation in gym class, though no compulsory nationwide curriculum exists. Physical education (PE) regulates and disciplines the body, cultivating bodily habits and teaching children important attitudes and cultural values about competition, teamwork, and physical well-being (Bourdieu 1977, 1984; Foucault 1979). Physical education provides an effective means of creating individuals who “fit” the citizenry and are fit citizens, ready to participate fully in society. However, for Muslim students, physical-education classes can be problematic. Especially at the secondary level, physical-education classes challenge Islamic norms concerning mixed-gender interactions (teacher-student interactions and student-student interactions), modesty, and required dress. At puberty, cross-gender contact should be limited to protect the chastity and modesty of both males and females (Qur’an 24:31). For instance, a male gym teacher assisting a female student or a female gym teacher assisting a male student to perform an exercise is considered inappropriate. Potential physical contact between male and female students, coed basketball games, and ballroom-dance classes are all considered unacceptable. The holy month of Ramadan, which requires fasting from sunrise to sunset, also influences a Muslim student’s ability to fully participate in gym class, as intense physical activity and a lack of food and drink may pose a health risk (such as fainting or experiencing dehydration and fatigue). Public nudity is another source of contention. Disrobing in front of others in semipublic spaces such as the locker room or showering in an open room forces students to expose their bodies. Adolescent Muslim girls, in particular, must consider how best to accommodate the requirements of gym class while at the same time maintaining their modesty. This is an issue because wearing the head scarf and covering from the wrist to the ankle demonstrates a girl’s modesty and religiosity. Standard dress for physical education is significantly more revealing. This dress does not violate body norms for Muslim boys; for males, the body must be covered from the navel to knees. In Germany, Muslim girls actively resist the disciplining effects of physical education by finding ways to skip gym class (Ritter 2006). They forget their gym clothes or claim that their religious beliefs require them to abstain

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from participation. The Berlin Senator for Youth, Education, and Sports, Klaus Böger, has argued that, “Sport classes are not just about physical conditioning. . . . P.E. is an elementary part of education and child rearing. In physical education classes, they can learn very important attitudes and virtues. Developing self worth, a sense of fair play” (Ritter 2006). Klaus Böger’s statement suggests that students build self-confidence and learn proper behavior and attitudes (such as teamwork and “sportsmanlike conduct” such as not cheating) that will help them succeed in their lives after school. For immigrants and refugees, these classes provide important lessons about life in Western society (Markus, chapter 3, this volume). PE is more than a required class; it becomes a way to incorporate foreign bodies into the nation-state by reinforcing state strategies of legally enforced assimilation for immigrants and refugees (Ong 1995; Shweder et al. 1997; Stolzenberg 1993). As the examples outlined in this case study suggest, immigrants and refugees confront and resist such “official attempts to force compliance with the cultural and legal norms of [European] American middle-class life” (Shweder et al. 1997, 62). In the public schools, refugees and immigrants of non-European heritage, such as Somalis, challenge dominant American, French, or German norms by simple acts, such as demanding a prayer space, donning a head scarf, or skipping gym class.

Cultivating a “Responsible and Involved Citizen” Maine’s Learning Results (MLR; Maine Department of Education 1997), the educational standard for all Maine schools, requires a “Health and Physical Education” component as essential to the development of all Maine children. The guiding principles for MLR state that each student must leave school “a responsible and involved citizen” who “knows the means of achieving personal and community health and well-being.” According to MLR, “physical education gives students the knowledge and skills to make the most of their physical and mental abilities.” As part of PE classes, students are expected to “demonstrate responsible personal and social behaviors in physical activity settings,” which includes “self respect and consideration of others.” At the secondary level, MLR lists important student learning outcomes such as to “participate cooperatively and ethically in both competitive and noncompetitive physical activities,” to “initiate independent and responsible personal behavior,” and to “demonstrate appropriate etiquette [and] ways of interacting.” Informed by MLR, all incoming freshmen and transfer students at Lewiston High School must take a semester of physical education within their first year, and all students must complete two semesters of physical education in order to graduate. The curriculum includes activities previously unfamiliar to

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Somalis (for example, fleece ball, floor hockey, lacrosse, and softball) and sports such as soccer and basketball, which were played in Somalia and are favorites among Somali youths. For all students, especially immigrants and refugees, participation in these sports inculcates American values about self-discipline, cooperation, independence, and competition. While selfdiscipline and cooperation support Somali notions of the “good” and moral person (that is, oriented toward family and community), cultivating independence and competition do not. The Lewiston High School Student/Parent Handbook clearly articulates the physical-education policy, including the required dress:28 Participation is an essential part of physical education and students must take part in the activities on a regular basis. Proper clothing is required for all participation; this consists of sneakers, a complete change from school clothes into shorts and tee shirts, or other recognized athletic wear.

For Muslim girls, changing into “shorts and tee shirts” raised an immediate problem. In meetings with school administrators, Somali elders and parents expressed their displeasure at this requirement due to concerns that it fostered immodesty in their daughters. For Somali girls who customarily wear hijab and cover their bodies, wearing short-sleeved shirts and exposing their arms leads to discomfort and embarrassment. Dressing in long-sleeved shirts eliminates this discomfort; however, certain exercises may inadvertently reveal bare skin, even when girls remain covered from wrist to ankle. In a coed gym class, such bare skin potentially jeopardizes a girl’s (and her family’s) honor, especially if her family maintains a more conservative approach to Islam. In the summer before the 2001 to 2002 school year, Abdi, the school district’s Somali community liaison, held a special workshop open to administrators and faculty in the Lewiston School District to inform them about the religious and cultural practices of Somalis. He also met directly with interested physical-education teachers at the middle school and high school levels to discuss PE requirements, including the dress code. Abdi emphasized the Somali Muslim community’s desire to “protect the modesty” of Somali adolescent girls. In order to be “good” Somalis and Muslims, women and adolescent girls must maintain an aesthetic that privileges modesty. Changing clothes occurs privately and especially not in front of non-Somalis. In contrast, the simple fact that American public schools require PE, which includes changing into shorts and T-shirts and showering after class, indicates altogether different norms about modesty. In Lewiston, Somali elders contemplated to what extent girls should participate in PE. Several elders met with the superintendent and other administrators to discuss how the LSD could address their specific concerns. Recounting this meeting, the superintendent said, “As far as the customs go, at

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the beginning we met with the elders in order to understand the issues related to physical education and food. There were specific concerns about young ladies and garb, head wear and things.” The elders also discussed how the schools might accommodate their religious needs. According to one elder, “girls should not be asked to do things that they are uncomfortable to do. We have concerns about girls exposing their legs.” After much deliberation, Somali elders and school officials reached a compromise: Somali girls would not be required to change for PE or take showers afterwards (which had never been customary practice for local teens either). Prior to PE they may pull on a pair of sweatpants, under their skirts, and join the class. School officials also conceded that Somali girls are not required to perform any exercises that they feel uncomfortable doing. Somali girls experience more pressure from parents about dress and modesty than do boys. To what extent Somali boys will participate in gym class (or in extracurricular sports for that matter) has not been an issue, as gym clothes cover “from the navel to the knee,” ensuring modesty. Somali parents encourage physical activity for their sons, and participation in sports does not conflict with gender norms. When Abdi informed the physical-education staff about this agreement, there seemed to be little indication that this informal policy would be unacceptable. The negotiation around PE did not end there. Members of the Somali community pushed Abdi to lobby the school district to excuse Muslim adolescent girls from gym classes at the high school because they are coed. More conservative members of the Muslim community felt that their daughters should not participate in any physical activity that might put them into contact with boys or potentially lead to an inappropriate display of the body. Abdi recounted to me, With the girls for instance, PE—physical education—is a subject like another subject and is graded. Girls need to participate for school requirements. Parents have said that “we don’t really want girls to participate in PE” I have gone to them and said that “girls back home [in Somalia] played sports.” . . . I referred parents to what has happened in Somalia in the past. The Somali nation sent men and women soccer teams to the Olympics and women played sports.

Somali female athletes typically wear a masar and long pants secured at the bottom with elastic, like sweatpants, to “give them freedom of movement,” according to Abdi. Though the elders and parents share this past, they embrace a different notion of what is proper behavior for their daughters in the United States. As recounted above, Somalis interpret the destruction of the Somali nation-state as a punishment by Allah for not being “good Muslims.” The success of the Islamist movement in Somalia speaks to this perspective. In the diaspora, Somalis intend to demonstrate their piety, regulating their children’s behavior as needed.

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The increased focus on female dress and behavior in the refugee camps in Dadaab, Kenya, further exemplifies the relationship between Somali ethnic and religious identity and how transnational networks shape Islamic practice in the diaspora. Today, some young Somali women choose to play volleyball in the camps, draped in a jilbaab with pants underneath.29 Even with such discrete dress, observers criticize their immodest behavior. “Some people think that if girls play sports they are prostitutes,” a young Somali woman explained to the journalist Marc Lacey (“Where Showing Skin Doesn’t Sell, A New Style Is a Hit,” New York Times, March 20, 2006, A4). “Our parents were embarrassed. They had bad feelings about girls playing outside.” Her comment intimates the relationship between a Somali girl’s public comportment and her family’s honor. This intense scrutiny of the Somali female body, in Dadaab and in Lewiston, demonstrates that norms have evolved since the start of the civil war. Eventually, members of the Muslim community accepted the informal policy, recognizing that it did accommodate most of their concerns. However, Somali adolescent girls also have a stake in this issue. Some girls who customarily cover instead opt to wear a masar rather than a head scarf when they participate in gym class, though none change into shorts or T-shirts. Other girls change from the jilbaab into the khimar. Though most participate, some girls choose to opt out of PE during Ramadan, using the fast as a reason to limit their physical activity. While Lewiston High School has accommodated many of the requests made by Somali parents and elders, some components of PE classes require that students demonstrate their knowledge of their body by exposing body parts. In the autumn of 2006, a Somali teenager, extremely shy and unlikely to publicly voice her discomfort, explained that a teacher asked her to pull up the sleeve of her shirt to indicate the distinction between her bicep and tricep. She indicated that she felt “naked” simply by revealing her bare arm in this way. In addition, Muslim students often feel embarrassed at the exposure of other students’ bodies that are dressed according to American norms. As the educators Symeon Dagkas and Tansin Benn (2006) point out, Muslim students have internalized a sense of shame about public displays of the body and often express discomfort around non-Muslim students because they share a different aesthetic, one in which display of the body (perhaps, inappropriately at times) is the norm (see also Kahan 2003).

Is Accommodation Exclusionary? A middle school physical-education teacher, who shared his perspectives soon after Abdi’s workshop in 2001, discussed his bewilderment at how the tenets of Islam regulated the physical activity of its adherents, especially those who are so young. He questioned to what degree the school

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should accommodate the demands of the Somali community. A Caucasian man in his late forties who embodies physical health and fitness, his main concern was that Somali students participate in gym class for their health and well-being. For many teachers, accommodating the beliefs and practices of their Muslim students challenges the policy of inclusion in public education. Sociologist of education Michael Olneck notes that informal or formal policies which allow students to opt out of classes may “inhibit cooperation and interaction between immigrant and native students” (2004, 388), reinforcing a marginalized status in the school. Citing the work of the anthropologist and educator Adeline Becker (1985), Michael Olneck claims that such exemption of Somali Muslim girls from gym class—as those promoted by the Somali elders—“though responsive to particular cultural prohibitions, fails to provide inclusive accommodations to immigrant needs” (2004, 388). This statement suggests that such proposals would negatively influence social integration into the school. The debate about the inclusion and exclusion of Muslim minority students in physical-education classes extends beyond the Lewiston school district. In response to the physical education researcher David Kahan’s (2003) article on “Islam and Physical Activity,” the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance posed the following question to its readers: “What accommodations, if any, should physical educators make for their Muslim students?” (2003, 17). Faculty members at a number of postsecondary institutions that train PE teachers supported David Kahan’s recommendations that public schools adopt policies that encourage Muslim students to participate in physical-education class—for instance, initiate flexible dress codes, limit physical contact between the genders, and modify activities that might require exposure of the body. However, several responses demonstrate the frustration and confusion that teachers experience when confronted with a minority religious group. Such reactions indicate the challenges that Muslim students face in the public school setting: On one side, we are supposed to separate church and state, therefore religion shouldn’t really be an issue in public schools. On the other hand, we want all children to have equal opportunities to be physically fit and healthy. It’s hard to come up with a solution that will please everyone. (Wolf, in Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2003, 17) I have respect for all religions, but I do not believe that we should have to change our standards and conduct of physical activity in schools because of this growing religion. . . . [Muslims] came to our country, and I do not feel it is right that we should have to change our standards for them. (Johnson, in Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2003, 17–18)

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If schools start to adapt their curriculum, schedules, and grading for every race and culture, we would need separate schools for everyone. This wouldn’t help bring the country together, but instead it would tear the country apart. (Van Es, in Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2003, 18)

For many educators who do not want to privilege religion in the classroom, confusion exists between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. While some American schools have adopted strategies similar to those of Lewiston High School and the LSD to accommodate Muslims, many teachers in Lewiston echo the concerns about adjusting school policies for Muslim students in the schools. This reflects the host community’s sentiment that such accommodations privilege the religious minority students over the “native” students. As Symeon Dagkas and Tansin Benn’s (2006) study of Islam and physical education in Great Britain and Greece indicates, schools in secular contexts do not always make accommodations for Muslim girls’ dress in PE class. They suggest that this may be due to a lack of information about religious requirements or an unwillingness on the part of the school or the state to acknowledge minority religious practices (see also Olsen 1997, 150–51). In contrast, Lewiston High School has adopted an informal policy that promotes the inclusion of Muslim students while at the same time enabling exclusion from certain exercises if a Muslim girl feels “uncomfortable.”

Religious Observances In developing guidelines about acknowledgement of religion, the Lewiston School Department bases its policy in the shared commitment for individual religious beliefs expressed in the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty. . . . The intent of this policy is to articulate guidelines which reflect and balance the academic and instructional mission of our schools, the law and legal guidelines relating to the separation of church and state, the richness and diversity of our population and sensitivity to the rights and dignity of the individual. (Lewiston School Department Policy Manual 2002.)

Accommodating the hijab and Somali concerns about modesty acknowledges the Muslim identity in the public school setting; however, schools must attend to other dimensions of Islamic practice that organize the everyday life of Muslims: prayers (salat), Friday congregational prayers (jum’ah), the fast during Ramadan, the great feasts of Islam (Eid al-adha and Eid al-fitr), and alternative food items to pork.30 Such Islamic requirements demonstrate participation in the ummah—the worldwide community of Muslims—and an emphasis on a communitarian cultural ideology (where the group supersedes the individual). The legal norms and official school policies privilege a liberal

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individualistic view, as demonstrated through a student’s free exercise of religion. The social integration of Somalis in the Lewiston public schools highlights the tension between communitarianism and individualism, and the frustration experienced by long-term Lewiston residents who may not articulate their frustration according to these ideologies, but who respond to—and oppose—what they perceive as a manipulation of individual rights for the recognition of a religious minority.31

Holidays and Prayer It is hard to practice Islam in a country that is not Muslim. It is very difficult to pray. In a Muslim nation—like Somalia—people just stop and pray. —Ali (Somali high school student, interviewed in 2003)

Under the State of Maine Law (Title 20A, Section 5001-A; Title 1 MRSA, Section 111-A-118), a student may be excused for a religious holiday when the absence is in “observance of recognized holidays when it is required during the regular school day.”32 However, in order to make up any missed work during the absence, parents must call the high school to inform the administration why the student is absent. Not all Somali parents know to do this. Instead, the school liaison sends out an email to school administrators to inform them about Ramadan and the Eids. Lewiston High School has made accommodations for Ramadan, the holy month of fasting which is compulsory for all Muslims.33 Initially Lewiston High School considered instituting a special room for prayer for Muslims during Ramadan, just as Portland High School has provided (“Prayer of the Faithful,” Portland Press Herald, November 28, 2001, A1). Described as a “minor accommodation” by Portland’s director of secondary education, the prayer room provides Muslim students a collective place to pray during Ramadan and alleviates the need for off-site passes. A Lewiston High School guidance counselor, approached by Somali elders, asked the principal if a separate room could be used in the school for prayer specifically for the month of Ramadan. However, school administrators decided against it, primarily due to the continued debate over prayer in schools and the Lewiston community’s concerns about “special rights” for Somalis. Instead, administrators provided Somalis with off-site passes to participate in jum’ah, the weekly congregational prayer held on Friday, at the Somali mosque during Ramadan. Due to concerns about the impact of such absences on Muslim students’ academic performance and attendance, the Somali community liaison met with parents at the mosque to suggest that students remain in class on Fridays. Parents and elders agreed that leaving for jum’ah disrupted their children’s education. During Ramadan, Muslims must abstain from food, beverage, and sexual

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intercourse from sunrise to sunset. While some schools allow Muslim students who fast to sit apart during lunch, the Lewiston schools established an informal policy to accommodate the Somali community. The superintendent noted, “For fasting, elders discussed that it was not good for students to be sitting with other kids while they ate lunch. [Muslim] students could go to study hall—not the cafeteria—during lunch time. They could go to a lab so they were not exposed to food.” Fasting Muslim students may limit participation in and may be excused from physical education due to health concerns, and the health clinic at the high school closely monitors those who maintain the fast. Since that initial discussion about Islamic prayer, Lewiston residents believe the rumors that the Somalis have a separate room for prayer at the high school and that they are allowed to wash their feet in the school fountains.34 Even though the local newspaper, the Sun-Journal, published an article on December 12, 2001, specifically discounting the rumor (“LHS Doesn’t Provide Room for Prayer,” A5), many residents still claim that the Somalis have a prayer room at the school. As the superintendent explained, I think people were confused because a nearby school—in Portland—they allowed space to pray. That wouldn’t work for us here. One, we didn’t have the space and, two; we would have to do it everywhere, in every school. You can pray anytime you want. You can pray silently at your desk or wherever.

For Muslims, however, performing salat requires more than the silent meditation described by the superintendent. Islamic prayer requires a physical demonstration of submission to God. After a ritual ablution intended to cleanse the mind and body, a Muslim performs a raka, or unit of prayer, which entails a series of movements performed while facing Mecca, the holy city of Islam. While performing salat, a Muslim stands, raises hands in a greeting, bows, kneels, prostrates, and sits. If a Muslim student chose to pray anytime he or she wanted, for instance, in the middle of math class, clearly the prayer would disrupt the learning environment. Islamic requirements demand the embodiment of an aesthetic that dramatically differs from JudeoChristian or mainstream European American middle class norms. In the December 12, 2001, article in the Sun-Journal, the principal explained why the high school did not allow a special room for prayer: “We didn’t want to create a set of circumstances that could generate some problems. . . . There is a fine line between the separation of church and state” (“LSD Doesn’t Provide Room for Prayers,” A5). In a conversation with me, the principal also indicated that if the school provided a room for Somalis to pray, they would have to reserve rooms for other religious groups so as not to discriminate against any. In contrast to this approach, high schools in Seattle, Washington, do reserve rooms for Muslim prayer (“Muslim Students Get

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Help Juggling School and Faith,” The Seattle Times, June 15, 2006, B1). Other public school systems, such as the San Diego School District, provide an afternoon recess for Muslim students to pray in a designated prayer space (“Public Schools Grapple with Muslim Prayer,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2007). To deal with such requests, the Seattle School District established a “Religious Accommodations Committee” to specifically examine Muslim prayer. Though the committee will also address the needs of other religious minorities, it has primarily handled the requests of the growing Muslim population. While these particular accommodations have not been made by the LSD, a former Lewiston ELL teacher allowed Somali Muslims to perform the Islamic prayer at the beginning or end of class, as long as it did not disrupt class activities.35 She made this allowance because the class was comprised primarily of Somali students. Other Somali students have indicated that they pray before or after gym class because the locker room provides the space and time for ablutions and prayer. Others “save up” their prayers, waiting until they return home from school to perform salat. As the Muslim population continues to grow in Lewiston, school officials may need to develop a more formal policy on Islamic prayer.

Dietary Requirements Islam disciplines the individual through daily practice such as prayer and ritual ablutions. Muslims also observe dietary restrictions, avoiding that which is haram, or prohibited (such as pork) and eating halal meat. The Qur’an clearly indicates what Muslims should and should not eat: “Forbidden to you is carrion and blood and the flesh of swine, and whatsoever has been killed in the name of some other than God” (Qur’an 5:3, 6:145). During their initial relocation to Lewiston, Somalis expressed concern about food served in the school cafeteria. The brochure, “The Somali Community in Lewiston,” states “The Holy Koran, the Islamic version of the word of God, teaches that is unlawful to . . . eat pork. . . . Therefore, it is important that the school department keep food items containing pork away from Somali students [author’s emphasis].” The brochure and the community liaison’s subsequent comments to the school committee suggested that the school district was ultimately responsible for accommodating and protecting the dietary requirements of its Muslims students. Since many Somali students do receive vouchers for school lunches, the school department needed to consider the Islamic restrictions. The Somali community liaison worked with the LSD nutrition specialist to develop special signage for the schools indicating items that Muslims consider haram, such as food containing pork or gelatin. The signs included images of pork products that might be served at the school and the word doofaar (“pig” in Somali) printed boldly across the

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top. The nutrition specialist also sought out non-pork products to replace any food items that might include pork. According to the nutrition specialist, “We offer a variety of options so it [eating pork] isn’t an issue for our students. . . . It has never been an issue for us. We have to accommodate a variety of needs.” These needs include providing options for students who may have dietary restrictions due to food sensitivities or medical reasons. When Abdi and I asked about accommodating the needs of Jewish students in the schools, the nutrition specialist said, “I am sure we have had conservative Jews in the schools but it has never been an issue.” Due to the number of Somali Muslims in the schools, however, the concern about pork required a systematic examination of the ingredients in food items purchased by the school department. The nutrition specialist explained, We have to special order beef bologna from the vendor. . . . Any products that might have pork—like hotdogs, bologna, or meatballs—we make sure they do not. We have beef hotdogs, beef bologna, and beef meatballs. Of course, we still offer pork products but we make sure that it is obvious.

Since the school department still provides pork products as an option for students, they have maintained age-appropriate labeling to ensure that Muslim students do not unintentionally take a pork product. At Lewiston High School, the cafeteria has limited signage; a student may purchase a ham sandwich or a slice of pepperoni pizza as indicated on the school menu. At the elementary level, schools still post signs or use labels to indicate that a food may contain pork or a pork by-product. The cafeteria staff also makes certain that Somali students do not accidentally take any pork items. According to the Somali liaison, It is an obligation on the part of the cafeteria staff to point out what food is pork. Staff actually physically stops a kid from eating food that has pork. I went to one of the elementary schools the other day and saw a cafeteria worker actually physically stop kids who get pizza with pepperoni saying “You can’t have that. It has pork.”

As he said this, he grabbed my arm and pulled it away from the desk to demonstrate what the worker did. As with the other accommodations, this modification of the school lunch menu to accommodate Islamic dietary restrictions has angered non-Muslim parents because it is one more example of how the Somalis “receive special privileges.” This sentiment reverberates into the larger community. In a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, which addressed an article about eliminating pork from the Androscoggin jail because of the Muslim inmates, reader J. Eugene Boivin (Sun Journal, April 23, 2002, A6) posed the ques-

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tion, “Why should the needs of the minority affect the habits of the majority?” Parents and teachers in Lewiston have posed this question, in different forms, over the course of the Somali migration. In the months preceding the 2007 to 2008 school year, long-time residents once again raised complaint at the accommodation of minority habits. As one parent posted on a local blog: “When are these people going to conform to our ways. . . . I can respect that they don’t want to eat [ham], but don’t stop everyone else from eating it.”

Conclusion The ultimate paradox of assimilation American-style may well be that, in the process, what is being assimilated metamorphoses into something quite dissimilar from what any of the protagonists ever imagined or intended, and the core itself is ineluctably transmuted, even as it keeps its continental name: America. (Rumbaut 1997, 954)

Public education strives to inculcate the values necessary to be a good citizen. But how are those values determined, and by whom? The answer of many public educators is to identify common themes shared by disparate groups— be they religious, ethnic, or cultural—and develop standards that meet that middle ground. Public schools, such as Lewiston High School, have attempted to provide normalization through school codes standardizing such individual choices as dress—even in the face of challenges that such limitations infringe on First Amendment rights to free expression or Fourteenth Amendment challenges that such codes restrict a student’s liberty to control their personal appearance. Schools justify these codes by claiming that they ensure a safe environment for study without disruption or interference with the rights of other students or the mission of the school. Increasingly, public schools must balance federal, state, and local academic directives with students’ cultural and religious mandates, even when these mandates radically contrast with American standards. Cultural and religious dictates that limit mixed-gender interaction; require modesty in dress that may contravene school dress codes or physical-education requirements; and call for ritual ablutions and prayer, dietary restrictions, and fasting, all force a public school district to address complex legal and sociopolitical dilemmas. This case study of the Lewiston public schools demonstrates how different forms (juridical, formal, and informal) of body regulation (including dress, prayer, and dietary habits) conflict and converge as schools and communities work out what it means to be a “good” American, Somali, or Muslim. Federal law provides a universal approach to minority religious practice and can legitimize school policy against local complaints of “special rights” in dealing with religious headgear or prayer in the school. School districts can apply

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their own approach to religious and cultural accommodation; for instance, local school districts can develop formal and informal policies to regulate body practices such as dress. By formalizing policies, in a policy manual or student handbook, school administrators and teachers are better able to handle complaints or transgressions by pointing to the policy. Formal policy allows teachers to focus on educating students rather than determining how best to police behavior such as prohibited or inappropriate dress. Informal policies (that is, agreed upon guidelines but not codified) allow school districts to support minority religious practice—according to legal mandates— without publicly acknowledging they are doing so. This strategy eliminates scrutiny by the community at large about special rights or privileges. A simple article of clothing such as the Islamic head scarf demonstrates the complexity of accommodating and integrating a minority group into the school system and into the larger community. This particular case also demonstrates the conflicts within the minority group about appropriate religious and cultural practice and how to preserve a cultural or religious identity while accommodating the norms of a non-Muslim, non-Somali context. What it means to be a “good” Somali or a “good” Muslim remains highly contested. The negotiations about Islamic practice in the Lewiston schools reflect larger worries expressed by Somali elders and parents. Within the Somali community, concerns arise about intergenerational conflicts (for example, Somali adolescents disrespecting parents and elders or not being “Somali enough”), religious observance (for example, Somali girls refusing to wear the hijab or Somali youth skipping Friday prayers), cultural allegiance (for example, speaking the Somali language or eating Somali food), and what it means to be a Muslim in the United States, especially post-9/11. For Somalis who reside in Lewiston, school represents an institution through which their children learn about the United States and succeed in ways that they or their parents were not able to in Somalia. While many Somali students struggle with and are limited by their English proficiency, numerous Somali youth now attend postsecondary schools: from local community colleges to vocational schools, from universities in the State of Maine system to highly selective liberal-arts colleges in New England. As the anthropologist Margaret Gibson notes in her study of Punjabi Sikhs in California, “As used by educators, assimilation and Americanization meant much the same thing, the absorption of the immigrant into the American fold” (1988, x, emphasis in the original). From the perspective of administrators, teachers, and majority community members in Lewiston, the schools should assimilate the Somali students. According to Margaret Gibson, Punjabi parents want to preserve their separate identity and culture; however, they expect their children to “accommodate themselves to the official rules of the school and to adopt the ‘good’ ways of ‘the Americans’” (1988, x–xi). Somali parents maintain this philosophy of “accommodation

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and acculturation without assimilation” while asserting that the schools should protect and support their religious and cultural identity at the same time as they provide education for their sons and daughters. In contrast to the Amherst Regional Public Schools, an affluent school system where school officials, teachers, and parents debate the term multiculturalism (see Sarat, chapter 4, this volume), Lewiston school officials and longterm residents disregard this term, using the discourse of tolerating diversity instead. In Lewiston, multiculturalism—only rarely noted in school materials and in the local newspaper—refers to the recognition of many cultures rather than an educational philosophy based on this difference. For a working class community concerned with the actual cost of education rather than philosophy, debating multiculturalism in the schools is a luxury they cannot afford. For many parents and taxpayers in Lewiston, a just school enables students to potentially achieve economic and political parity upon graduation. The recent policies enacted by the Lewiston School Committee counter this public vision of a just school. Historically, for many Lewistonians, a just school sought to “remedy economic and political inequality” and to achieve what James Banks (1996; chapter 8, this volume) calls “mainstream citizenship education” or assimilation. Challenging this assimilationist version of education, French Canadians established parochial schools where the French language and Catholic religion could flourish rather than face the cultural and linguistic assimilation in the public schools (Riedel, chapter 5, this volume). The recent policies enacted by the Lewiston School Department and School Committee support the contrasting vision of a just school presented by Martha Minow (introduction, this volume): “schools should afford equal regard for diverse group experiences, enabling students from different backgrounds to feel at home in school and to thrive there.” Clearly the public outcry to the Islamic head scarf in the public schools—or for ELL classes for immigrant students— indicates vehement opposition to such a model of education. The public tension in Lewiston over what constitutes a proper or just school stems from the contradictory visions of education now being articulated by the Lewiston School Department and School Committee. What is at stake is more than religious garb or pork in the school. What is at stake is what it means to be an American and what American schools should look like in the twenty-first century. As the case of Lewiston suggests, the very notion of a just school remains highly contested.

Notes 1.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Maine is 97.6 percent Caucasian. The remaining population consists of African Americans (0.5 percent), Asians (0.7 percent), Hispanics and Latinos (0.7 percent) and Native Americans (1 percent). Few are foreign born.

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2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

196

As Martha Minow (chapter 2, this volume) notes, how schools provide for students of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and administer ELL programs is important to the cultural accommodation of minority groups. While a comprehensive review of the ELL program exceeds the limits of this chapter, how the Lewiston School Department (LSD) has managed ELL classes for its LEP population, primarily comprised of ethnic Somali students, deserves a critical examination. Though the LSD has met federal regulations by maintaining a Lau plan, only in December 2006 did the school committee include the plan in the school department policy manual. The Lewiston schools did not have a dedicated ELL district coordinator until the 2006 to 2007 academic year. In 2003, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division conducted a thorough investigation of the ELL program and in 2007 declared it acceptable. For a discussion of assimilation and accommodation see, for instance, articles by Ruben Rumbaut (1997) and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco (2000). English as a Second Language (ESL) is now referred to as English Language Learners (ELL). Secondary migration refers to the voluntary movement of refugees from their initial resettlement sites. The migration results in a number of economic and social consequences for both the migrants and the community to which they move. During the 2001 to 2002 school year, 243 students enrolled in ESL courses in the Lewiston schools. Today, students in the Lewiston schools speak over seventeen languages. According to the ELL director, the ELL population continues to increase, expanding to over 40 percent during the 2006 to 2007 school year. Composed primarily of ethnic Somali and Somali Bantu students, the ELL program in the Lewiston public schools now supports over 600 students. While this chapter focuses on certain aspects of social integration that transcend the school culture, I acknowledge that the rapid influx of Somali secondary migrants to Lewiston has led to a multitude of significant cultural and educational conflicts within the Lewiston schools, primarily because officials and teachers were unprepared for such a dramatic demographic change. Teachers have experienced a direct (and often interpreted as hostile) challenge to the very purpose of education. From cultural practices (for example, speaking Somali, eating meals with hands, avoiding eye contact, and a discontinuity between parental expectations and those of teachers) to educational barriers (for example, limited English proficiency, limited experience with schooling, and emotional difficulties), the day-to-day responsibilities of teachers became overwhelming for many, especially against a backdrop of the school reforms of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Somali intellectuals claim that Somalis are not in fact as homogeneous as colonial anthropologists depict. For instance, Abdi Kusow (1998) cites different dialects and practices among northern and southern Somalis as evidence of heterogeneity. The political boundaries of the former Somali Democratic Republic, established by the former colonial powers, inadequately represent “Somalia” as demarcated by Somalis. It includes areas of other states, including Djibouti, the Ogaden in Ethiopia, and the North Frontier Territory in Kenya. For perspectives on nationalism in Somalia, see work by Catherine

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9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Besteman (1996), Ioan M. Lewis (2002), Said Samatar (1982), Anna Simons (1995), and Saadia Touval (1963). Except for school officials who can be easily identified and have been referred to in news reportage, this chapter uses pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of my informants. In the fall of 2001, members of the Islamic school (dhugsi) and a mutual assistance organization in Lewiston prepared a letter of complaint to city and school officials stating that school district administrators had ignored their requests to meet to discuss a halal diet for school lunches, accommodations for Islamic religious holidays, and curriculum prohibited to Muslim students, such as sex education. The LSD Somali community liaison had discussed these issues with school officials, though presenting a more moderate position than more conservative community members might like. The letter asserted that since Somali elders and community members had not elected the Somali liaison to represent their concerns in the schools, school officials should meet directly with them. Ultimately, school administrators did meet with Somali elders to ease the adjustment of Somali students to the Lewiston public schools. This was established in the case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). The decision in this case said that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” As Leila Ahmed argues, “Veiling—to Western eyes, the most visible marker of the differentness and inferiority of Islamic societies—became the symbol now of both the oppression of women (or, in the language of the day, the degradation of women) and the backwardness of Islam, and it became the open target of colonial attack and the spearhead of the assault on Muslim societies” (1992, 152). Though she reflects on the colonial period in this comment, clearly her statement bears on the postcolonial period as well. In liberal democratic societies, the veil symbolizes Islam and states publicly a woman’s religiosity and identity. Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, declared the niqab “a visible statement of separation and of difference,” asking Muslim women in the face veil to remove it when speaking to him (“British Leader Stirs Debate with his Call to Raise Veils,” New York Times, October 7, 2006, A8). From Jack Straw’s perspective, the veil symbolizes a growing ethnic divide and social dislocation in Britain, perhaps the unintentional consequences of multiculturalism. Supporting Jack Straw, Prime Minister Tony Blair called the veil a “mark of separation” that “makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable” (“Blair Criticizes Full Islamic Veils as a “Mark of Separation,” New York Times, October 18, 2006, A3). This focus on the veil in public intimates larger questions about the willingness of Muslims to adapt to life in a liberal pluralistic society. According to the anthropologist Fuad Khuri, “there is no word for farj in English; it is a clear case of polysemy, a word carrying multiple meanings. It may be used to refer to that part of the human body that lies between the legs (genitalia), or between the navel and the knee, or between the hands and the legs” (2001, 37). For many teachers in Lewiston, a student who avoids eye contact indicates dis-

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

198

respect for their authority. Muslims lowering the gaze counters mainstream American norms: eye contact demonstrates respect, honesty, and trustworthiness. This simple act of eye contact carries much significance for the integration of Somali Muslims into the Lewiston schools and into the community at large. Though the Qur’an does not prescribe how a woman should cover, detailed guidelines exist on what makes the clothing Islamic. According to my informant and friend Aisha, the hijab should be opaque, should cover the body except the face and the hands, should be loose fitting, should not attract attention, and should not resemble men’s clothing. Her guidelines are similar to those detailed by the writer Huda Khattab (1993) in The Muslim Woman’s Handbook. The initial wave of secondary migrants moved from Clarkston, Georgia, to Maine due to concerns about gangs, drugs, and crime in the areas where they had been placed. Somali parents also noted concerns about the influence of African American culture (including dress and music) on their children. For ethnic Somali youth residing in Lewiston, attitudes about racial categories reflect intergenerational conflicts in the diaspora. For example, elders and parents see Atlanta and other inner cities as harmful to Somali identity because of the influences of African American gangs, violence, and racialization. Youth see such places as beneficial to their integration because they can claim an existing racial category (African American or black) and feel included. In Lewiston, a predominantly white city and school system, inclusion based on race translates into exclusion for Somali youth. Today, the khimar refers to two pieces of cloth, often made out of a cotton material: one piece covers the hairline and the other is a circular piece of cloth with a hole cut out so that it fits closely around the face. The khimar requires little adjustment so it is easy for young girls to wear. Somalis do not identify as “black,” though they are racialized as such in the American lexicon. As one Somali elder explained to me in August 2001, “race is not important to Somalis. We are not concerned with color – black or white – like you Americans” (see also Kusow 1998, 2006). Other Somalis have reaffirmed this comment over the years. However, the marginalization of Somali Bantus, both in Somalia and in Lewiston, indicates that race does matter to Somalis (see Besteman 1996). The school-board chair acknowledged the conflicts teachers faced in addressing violations of the dress code, especially at the high school level. His concern about “consistency and specificity” referred to regulating how much a student’s clothing should reveal as well as to what types of garments they could use to cover. The negotiations around the hijab in the schools demonstrate the Lewiston school district’s attempt to effectively address students’ constitutional rights while managing complaints about inequitable regulation of appropriate dress in the schools. When discussing the revised dress-code policy with the superintendent, I asked him to reflect on how the change in the dress code acknowledged wearing headgear for religious reasons. “Did 9/11 and the Somali influx have anything to do with this?” The superintendent responded, “We realized that there were medical reasons to cover the head. Kids in the schools were recovering from cancer.

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22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

There are other medical reasons you might need to wear a hat. There are safety reasons too. A kid in shop has to wear a hard hat. We needed to acknowledge that. Then there are religious reasons too. So let’s address it that way.” He paused and said, “We needed to make clear what the determination of religion was at the school.” The superintendent failed to address the question as stated. A cursory content analysis of dress codes from schools across the country where Somali immigrants now reside indicates that many schools that initially enrolled Somali students prior to 9/11 did not adjust their dress codes to formally acknowledge religious headgear (for example, Portland, Maine). However, schools that enrolled Somali students after 9/11 formally revised the dress code to allow students to wear religious headgear in the school. A purposeful review of dress-code policies across the country may reveal that, in response to “Islamophobia,” schools with Muslim students have adopted a dress code explicitly allowing religious headgear in the public setting while those with no Muslim students have not. Past LHS student handbooks on file with the author. Student Handbook for 2006-2007 can be found at http://www.lewiston.k12.me.us/~lhsweb/about/ handbk06-07.pdf. The LSD policy on dress excludes the final sentence regarding “non-bandana style headbands.” This provision prohibits students from wearing “hats, caps, bandanas, plastic caps, or hoods on jackets inside the [school] building” (Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. 2004, Complaint-in-Intervention, 2). U.S. Memorandum of Law in Support of Its Cross-Motion filed May 6, 2004. The clarification of “not face” was included due to a Florida woman’s 2003 request to cover her face with a niqab for her state driver’s license photograph. She claimed that the state order to remove her veil for a driver’s license photo violated religious beliefs. A Florida judge rejected her claim. While in the United States a plurality of perspectives about sexuality, dress, and the body exist, wearing a head scarf is not a customary practice, nor is it exclusively a Somali one. Other Muslims wear a head scarf, as do women of the Hindu and Jewish faith. Women of Greek and Russian descent also wear head coverings. This question is inspired by Ruben Rumbaut’s (1997) discussion of “From what? To what?” In the 2004–2005 handbook, the Lewiston High School administration eliminated the physical-education policy to acknowledge the informal accommodation of Muslim dress in PE classes. Working with the UNHCR, designers from Nike created volleyball uniforms for the Somali girls that do not restrict their movement and cover them even with rigorous play (UNHCR 2005). As one of the Five Pillars of Islam, Muslims must perform salat five times daily: at daybreak, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and evening. For an insightful review of liberalism and communitarianism, see Richard Shweder, Martha Minow, and Hazel Markus (2002). For a thorough discussion with regard to Mozert v. Hawkins (1987), see Nomi Maya Stolzenberg (1993). The Lewiston School Department academic year calendar identifies the December holiday as “Christmas Recess,” not “Holiday or Winter Recess.”

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33. 34.

35.

Throughout the school year, the calendar indicates Christian holidays but not Jewish or Muslim holidays. It is compulsory for all except for the ill and women who are menstruating or pregnant. As one mother from the host community told me, “The [Somali] girls are washing their feet in the water fountain at the high school. Don’t drink from any water fountain in the city because the Somalis are washing their feet in them.” According to the Lewiston High School principal at the Lewiston School Committee meeting on February 25, 2002, “As for the rumor about the water fountains, a girl attempted to wash her feet in the sink of the bathroom to prepare for prayer and was told not to do it. This is part of the growth process. . . . Over the next several months we will initiate a civil-rights and diversity program at the high school to deal with these issues. There are a lot of misperceived notions that get blown out of context. . . . We deal with issues on a daily basis so they do not take place at the high school. The more informed we become we will be better able to handle the diversity.” The teacher’s actions are supported by the Department of Education (2003) “Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary School.” See http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/religionandschools/ prayer_guidance.html.

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Laitin, David D., and Said S. Samatar. 1987. Somalia: Nation in Search of a State. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Lau v. Nichols. 1974. 414 U.S. 563. Levinson, Bradley, and Margaret Sutton. 2001. “Introduction: Policy as/in Practice— A Sociocultural Approach to the Study of Educational Policy.” In Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy, edited by Margaret Sutton. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group. Lewis, Ioan M. 2002. A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa. 4th ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Lewiston School Department. 2007. Updated Lewiston Public Schools Policy Manual. Lewiston, Maine: Lewiston School Department. Maine Department of Education. 1997. “Learning Results.” Accessed at http://www .maine.gov/education/lres/preface.htm. McGown, Rema Berns. 1999. Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McMichael, Celia. 2002. “‘Everywhere is Allah’s Place’: Islam and the Everyday Life of Somali Women in Melbourne, Australia.” Journal of Refugee Studies 15(2): 171–88. Mozert v. Hawkins. 1987. 827 F. 2d; 102 ALR Fed 197. Olneck, Michael R. 2004. “Immigrants and Education in the United States.” In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks. 2nd ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Olsen, Laurie. 1997. Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. New York: The New Press. Ong, Aihwa. 1995. “Making the Biopolitical Subject: Cambodian Immigrants, Refugee Medicine and Cultural Citizenship in California.” Social Science and Medicine 40(9): 1243–57. Richard, Mark P. 2001. “From Canadien to American: The Acculturation of FrenchCanadian Descendants in Lewiston, Maine, 1860 to the Present.” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University. Ritter, Bettina. 2006. “Muslim Students at Berlin Schools Opt Out of Gym Class.” Deutsche Welle. Accessed at http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1859368, 00.html. Rumbaut, Ruben G. 1997. “Assimilation and Its Discontents: Between Rhetoric and Reality.” Special issue: Immigrant Adaptation and Native-Born Responses in the Making of Americans, International Migration Review 31(4): 923–60. Samatar, Said S. 1982. Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad ‘Abdille Hasan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shweder, Richard A., Martha L. Minow, and Hazel R. Markus. 2002. “Introduction: Engaging Cultural Differences.” In Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, edited by Richard A. Shweder, Martha L. Minow, and Hazel R. Markus. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Shweder, Richard A., Hazel R. Markus, Martha L. Minow, and Frank Kessel. 1997. “The Free Exercise of Culture: Ethnic Customs, Assimilation, and American Law.” Items 51(4): 61–67. Simons, Anna. 1995. Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

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Stolzenberg, Nomi Maya. 1993. “‘He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out’: Assimilation, Indoctrination, and the Paradox of a Liberal Education.” Harvard Law Review 106(3): 581–667. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo. 2000. “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Assimilation but Were Afraid To Ask.” Daedalus 129(4): 1–30. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo, Peter Roos and Carola Suárez-Orozco. 1998. “Cultural, Educational and Legal Perspectives on Immigration: Implications for School Reform.” In Law and School Reform: Six Strategies for Promoting Equity in Education, edited by Jay Heubert. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University. Tiilikainen, Marja. 2003. “Somali Women and Daily Islam in the Diaspora.” Social Compass 50(1): 59–69. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. 1969. 393 U.S. 503,506. Touval, Saadia. 1963. Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR). 2005. “Designers on a Mission: Dressing Refugee Girls for Sports.” Accessed at http://www.unhcr.org/ cgi-bin/texis/vtx/print?tbl=NEWS&id=42cbed364. U.S. Department of Education. 1998. Religious Expression in Public Schools. Washington: Department of Education. U.S. Department of Justice. 2004. “Justice Department files complaint against Oklahoma School District seeking to protect student’s right to wear headscarf to public school. March 30.” Press release. Accessed at http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/ 2004/March/04_crt_195.htm. Vaisse, Justin. 2004. “Veiled Meanings: The French Law Banning Religious Symbols in Public Schools.” U.S.-France Analysis Series. Washington: Brookings Institution. Wessler, Stephen. 2003. “The Fractured American Dream: The Destructive Impact of U.S. Anti-Terrorism Policy on Muslim, Latino, and Other Immigrants and Refugees Two Years after September 11, 2001.” Center for Prevention of Hate Violence, University of Southern Maine. Zine, Jasmin. 2001. “Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education and the Politics of Religious Identity.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 32(4): 399–423.

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7 REPUBLICAN IRONIES: EQUALITY AND IDENTITIES IN FRENCH SCHOOLS John R. Bowen

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he tensions between alternative visions of success that permeate discussions of American schools are hardly unique to the United States. Across Europe, schools recently have become emblematic of both new forms of cultural difference and new concerns over inequality and social exclusion. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, anxieties over integration and immigration have led some countries to make sharp turns away from multicultural policies and have led others to further tighten rules of entry and heighten demands for assimilation. Islam and Muslims are central to these debates and divisions. School policies in each European country have reflected a distinct set of ideas about how to respond to cultural differences and political pressures, and these policies are now under the microscope, if not the scalpel. In countries that once applied multicultural models of integration, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, schools had been used to preserve immigrants’ identities, but these policies did little to bring together new immigrants and long-term residents; new policies require uniformity and integration. Britain’s patterns of immigration from South Asia produced ethnic enclaves in major cities, and British race-based ideas of Englishness meant that second-generation South Asian pupils continued to be seen as “Pakistanis.” Outward expressions of difference, such as Islamic dress, are now attacked as emblems of self-isolation. In these and other countries, schools had been seen as places where differences were explicitly recognized and, perhaps, celebrated. They corresponded to the more pluralist and multiculturalist American schools (for example, Sarat, chapter 4, this volume; Riedel, chapter 5, this volume; Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume). Now all is up for grabs in a new climate of fear and concern about terrorism and failures of social integration. France presents a strong contrast with these other European countries and with the United States. France stands out for its strongly Republican model of society and schooling. Equality is understood as requiring strong unifor-

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mity and thus as leaving ethnic and religious differences outside the classroom. Those on all sides of current educational debates in France subscribe to this model. Those who challenge the current system do so on grounds that it promotes exclusion and limits opportunity, not on grounds of promoting multiculturalism. Debates in France focus on the distribution of life chances, not on rights of public recognition of cultural identities. Whether or not this avowedly “ethnicity-blind” philosophy of schooling can accommodate the ethnic differences in today’s France, the contrast with the United States serves to underscore the specificity of the American model. French schools reflect a series of efforts to implement a set of principled commitments to equality and liberty, but they also reflect a hierarchically structured society, an immovable bureaucracy dubbed “the mammoth,” and the enduring legacies of colonial rule. The strong commitment to the ideal of equality not only appears in the French motto, but it also fits the centralized and state-centered nature of French institutions. The state can try to guarantee equality of treatment in schools by imposing a highly centralized set of rules for school admissions and curricula. The emphasis on erasing ethnic and religious distinctions in the classroom in fact derives from these precepts: to treat all pupils equally means treating them without reference to their cultural backgrounds or their value commitments. No positive role is given to cultural or ethnic differences within a class, a school, or in the society. These commitments to a state-guaranteed equality often conflict with a second French ideal: that of liberty. Citizens are guaranteed freedom of religious belief, and practice, and association, and private Catholic schools, long called “écoles libres,” gain their political warrant from these principles (although they exist because of political compromises made at different moments in the twentieth century). Parents claim the freedom to choose schools for their children; many strategically select schools as well as residences in order to gain a superior school, which often means a school with children who already are achieving high marks. Equality and liberty also coexist with a system-wide principle of hierarchy. High schools were created to develop an elite, and the educational system is structured around rankings, competitive admissions, external and internal tracking, and informal distinctions between “good” and “bad” pupils. Reform efforts usually involve adding some students from poor backgrounds to the existing system. Newcomers quickly internalize this system, such that vocational training is experienced as a humiliation rather than as a chance to develop one’s talents. France, then, contrasts with the United States, but French Republican positions may in fact illuminate current American debates. Discussions of the American system often underscore the challenge that celebrations of cultural difference pose to liberal philosophical commitments embodied in school practices. Those commitments focus on the individual and on the importance

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of treating all individuals in the same way, so as to affirm all pupils’ access to educational and social goods. French Republican philosophy does not exclude these commitments; it embraces them in a more holistic vision of society. Although it stresses common elements and commitments over particularistic ones, in school settings this emphasis includes a strongly individualistic justification, one that recalls classical liberal positions: that giving each pupil the capacity to revise his or her commitments during the formative school years guards his or her liberty and allows full participation in the civic community. The key differences between Republican and liberal positions on schools are ones of relative emphasis: on a shared identity in the former, and on individual pathways in the latter. But these are differences in the weighting of the principles of individual liberty and common identity, not a radical split between them.

Multiculturalism in the Republic Perhaps more than in any other country, French officials and intellectuals regularly subject ideas and problems to scrutiny in the light of a specific set of political theories, usually called Republicanism. Republican theories posit that those who live together in a society must share certain basic values, and the state must act to ensure that newborns and newcomers learn those values (Favell 2001; Bowen 2007). If the society has the right mechanisms to integrate people and to make them into citizens, then the state can be quite generous in welcoming immigrants. But these mechanisms require immigrants to take on the values and the behaviors that signify that one has become French. From this perspective, institutions that stand between the individual and the state—labor unions, religious groups, and ethnic associations—threaten to occlude the general interest and deform the individual’s priorities. Since the 1789 Revolution, politicians and philosophers have denounced such intermediate groups as weakening the bonds of citizenship—even as they form the ever-present underpinnings of everyday sociability. Although post-Revolutionary men and women were avid creators of clubs of all sorts, it was only in 1901 that they gained the general right to form associations—although labor unions had been authorized decades earlier to counter the threat of wildcat strikes—and foreign residents only gained the same rights in 1981. Tocqueville, of course, had pointed to France’s suspicion of intermediate corporate bodies as one of its more marked contrasts with association-prone North Americans. Initially that suspicion focused on guilds and clubs, and legally it is traced to the antiguild Le Chapelier Act of 1791. However, in the twentieth century suspicion fell most soundly on associations that represented what might be thought to be communal interests—those based on common ethnicity, origins, language, or religion. Associations have had to

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present their role as facilitating the integration of the individuals into French society rather than representing communal interests, lest they be accused of fomenting communalism (communautarisme) (Kastoryano 2002). Where the schools are concerned, this suspicion of communalism is even deeper for two reasons: a positive reason about Republican integration and a negative one about dangers to that integration. French schools long have been regarded as the major mechanisms by which the state shapes individuals of varied backgrounds into citizens holding the same values. (The term state in France always means “the central state,” not regions, cities, or government in general.) Negatively, the schools provided the central mechanism to attack two cleavages in the French nation: regional and religious. Schoolteachers were the designated agents to make “peasants into Frenchmen” and to increase the capacity of people living within French state boundaries to participate in a national public life—one that was lived in the French language and understood as part of a long-term French history. Teachers also served the Republican state by fighting against the Church’s efforts to control the minds of primary school pupils. From the mid-1880s to the mid-1920s, the Third Republic succeeded, through a series of decrees, laws, and negotiations, in removing the church from the public schools and depriving the church of its public status. This was a dual victory that later was to be summed up with the single word laïcité. Against this background it is unsurprising that multiculturalism would have a difficult lexical life in France. The historical anchors for the term are very different than in the United States or Britain. Although France has been a country of immigration, it is not that experience that lies behind discussions of multiculturalism; rather, it is the combat for toleration. Those few figures in French public life who admit to a role for multiculturalism refer to the Wars of Religion and the rise of liberal toleration. For them, multiculturalism means tolerating the private beliefs of others and perhaps also tolerating a set of harmless visible differences (such as those of dress and cuisine) among people in France. The much larger group of public figures who find the term out of line with France—particularly in the context of schools—criticize the concept for blurring the important lines separating the three domains of religion, culture, and the Republic. Religion in the sense of belief or individual practice (la religion) has no legal status in France, except insofar as one may not be persecuted for his or her beliefs—“even religious ones”—in the words of the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights. An organized religious body (le culte), however, may be supported and regulated by the State. Individuals may form a private religious association according to the rules of the 1905 law that dissolved public churches. These associations enjoy freedom of association, but only for religious activities. They may apply to the French State Council for recognition as a properly organized religious body. If the Council determines

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that they are such a body, with regular meetings and a properly universal character, they obtain tax exemptions and are more likely to persuade mayors or prefects to assist them in building houses of worship. Contrary to popular belief outside of France, the French state gives large subsidies to religious bodies and religious-backed private schools. If the State supports and regulates certain religious bodies, it does so partially in order to strictly limit their sphere of activity. As the then Chief of the Bureau of Cultes explained to me in 2002, their freedom extends to their rights to worship in their house of worship and teach their faith, and that is all; handing out tracts in the street, selling medicines, and, above all, exerting a presence in public schools, may be forbidden by the state. This rather minimalist view of religious practices is always close to the line tolerated by the European Court of Human Rights (and every now and then French prohibitions are overturned by that court), but the overall philosophy—tolerate what happens in church, control what happens outside—is part of basic French Republican beliefs and laws. The controversies surrounding religion in the schools of the early years of the twenty-first century illuminate the specific nature of this dividing line. A law passed in March 2004 forbade pupils from wearing “distinctive signs” of their religious affiliations. Islamic head scarves were the target, but Sikh turbans also were banned because these signs were claimed to affirm a divisive identity in the classroom, and thus interfere with both the proper functioning of the class as a social body and also with the process of forging a Republican identity among the pupils as citizens of France above all other identities. Although most schools forbade wearing religious signs in the school building, most of the teachers and many of the principals who supported the ban were concerned about the boundary between the classroom and the hallway and they had been willing to allow girls to push back their scarves at the moment of entering the classroom, where teaching and identity-forging became the prerogative of the state. At the same time, many public figures urged that the state do more to render legitimate the religious heritage and practices of many living in France. Not only did the state begin to look for ways to give greater financial support to mosques and training to imams (though the latter measure was motivated by security concerns, it was welcomed by many Muslim leaders), but it also urged teachers to give greater attention to religion as an objective fact in their teachings. If religion as personal identity was firmly banished from class, religion as a scientific fact was to be welcomed. A new institute created for that purpose has the mission of developing the teaching tools for educating the adult public as well as school pupils about the role of religion in the history of the world—but only after insisting on the firm wall between public citizenship and private beliefs and practices. The same refusal of public identities other than those of French citizens

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extends to ethnicity, race, and “origins”—although not without considerable linguistic ambiguity. Officially, the state considers the religious, racial, and ethnic identity of its residents and citizens to be none of its business. A 1978 law forbids any state body from collecting such data, a self-restraint currently under attack for complicating the task of fighting racial and ethnic discrimination in housing and employment. This legal restriction mirrors a political taboo. Awkward references to the “North African origins” of a potential state appointee—a linguistic effort to wrap ethnicity in a historical fact of immigration in order to appear to be practicing affirmative action while remaining Republican—are inevitably condemned by political opponents, and all the more so when the French President Nicolas Sarkozy referred to the “Muslim origins” of a candidate for appointment. Efforts at affirmative action, called positive discrimination, have been tolerated (and often have succeeded) if and only if they have targeted poor school districts rather than individuals. The state of Texas took a similar approach when it guaranteed admittance into the top universities to the top 10 percent of each high school’s graduates. (This similarity has not gone unnoticed in France [Weil 2005]). Complaints about the divisive effects of multiculturalism in the classroom often refer to short-lived enthusiasms during the early 1980s, at the beginning of François Mitterrand’s two-term presidency. The “right to a difference” was a slogan on the left in favor of something very much like American multiculturalism (for example, celebrating origins in school or holding parades with multicolored puppets). In this climate, antiracism groups, most notably SOS Racisme, promoted a public defiance of intolerance and hostility. But as state policy, the “right to a difference” defined and indeed mandated difference. It did so in a way that was strange to France but reminiscent of Dutch and Belgian notions of preserving religious or linguistic communities. Special funds were allocated to teach “languages and cultures of origin” in public schools— not to facilitate integration, but because these pupils might one day return to these countries. These measures fit uneasily with the assimilationist predilections of French public school teachers, especially those on the Socialist left. The Left finally retreated from “the right to a difference” when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, took up the slogan as his own, agreeing that these differences were basic, that they showed the impossibility of assimilating immigrants into French culture, and that they in fact supported his own program of encouraging “them” all to return “home.” The Left then retreated to “integration”—implying that newcomers take on some floor-level package of French values—or “insertion”—implying that they gain basic social and economic roles. Neither term, however, has been broadly accepted: most actors have dropped the term insertion as too narrow; many who were born in France to immigrant parents find that they are asked to “integrate” and wonder why the term seems to designate a one-way process of some people becoming more like some others.

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But soon the Left turned toward a Republicanism of citizenship, shared values, and secularism, and against multiculturalism and Islam—both seen as socially divisive. The new Republicanism also grew out of the Left’s disillusionment with the Socialist politics of the 1980s. The rosy glow attending Mitterrand’s 1981 victory faded quickly when, that December, the government pronounced the declaration of martial law in Poland to be “an internal affair” (alienating the anti-Soviet Left), unemployment climbed throughout 1982 and 1983 (angering the working class), and the National Front attracted impressive vote totals (disconcerting nearly everyone else). The Socialist government’s unpopularity was verified by the party’s poor showing in the 1986 legislative elections, which gave a tremendous boost to the National Front and victory to those on the center right. Jacques Chirac became Prime Minister. Unemployment continued to rise, and the Socialists soon returned to power accompanied by widespread discontent and a growing tendency to blame immigrants for the economic problems. By the late 1980s, many intellectuals on the political left were looking for new sources of political direction. Many former Communists had become disillusioned with the Soviet paradise even before the fall of the Berlin wall. Some, such as the firebrand Régis Debray and the former Maoist André Glucksmann, turned to the ideals of the Republic as their new source of value in political life. Others, such as the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, attacked the misplaced multiculturalism of the early Mitterrand years and the ethical relativism that it supported at home and abroad. In the midst of this anxiety over France’s political and cultural turn came the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution in July 1989. The Revolution was and is the touchstone of those on the left who defend the Republic, and its heritage had come under revisionist attack in the preceding years from such eminent French historians as François Furet and François Crouzet. Régis Debray and others viewed the showmanship of the bicentennial celebrations as trivializing the Revolution. The perceived rise of political Islam gave these defenders of Republicanism a new cause. In early 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his famous fatwa against the novelist Salmon Rushdie, in which he declared that Salmon Rushdie’s blaspheming of the Prophet Muhammad in his book Satanic Verses proved that he was an apostate and fit to be killed under Islamic law. One month later, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was born in Algiers. The civil war in Lebanon among religion-defined political blocs continued. Religion, but particularly Islam, seemed to have crossed into politics in places very close to France. Then, that September, three girls showed up for the first day at their middle school wearing Islamic dress. At another moment, the girls’ appearance would likely have passed unnoticed. Girls had been showing up at school

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with scarves for years, and they either attended the school with their scarves or agreed to remove them during class. Indeed, as shown in the October 30 to November 5, 1989, edition of the weekly paper Témoignage Chrétien, an earlier class photo at the same school showed a girl in headscarf as evidence of the middle school’s openness to cultural diversity (Rochefort 2002). But now international “political Islam” appeared on magazine covers in the form of Iranian women in Islamic dress, adding a new dimension to scarves in French schools. The conjuncture of domestic and foreign threats made scarf-wearing into a national affair. Two open letters published in November by public intellectuals on the left offered sharply opposed positions amid inflated rhetoric. One, entitled “Teachers, Don’t Give in!” was signed by the intellectuals and writers Élisabeth Badinter, Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut, Élisabeth de Fontenay and Catherne Kintzler. It ran as a cover story in the mainstream, putatively Socialist review, Le Nouvel Observateur. The authors warned that the bicentennial anniversary of the French Revolution could become “the Munich of the Republican school” (November 2 to 8, 1989). A second open letter, “For an Open Laïcité,” appeared in the more socially activist review, Politis, and was signed by Joëlle Brunerie-Kauffmann (a woman gynecologist who had fought for the right to abortion), Harlem Désir (head of SOS-Racisme), and the social scientists René Dumont, Gilles Perrault, and Alain Touraine (November 9 to 15, 1989). These intellectuals did not support scarves in schools but opposed exclusion, claiming that keeping the girls away from school fed the interests of fundamentalists and the National Front. They denounced the “Vichy of the integration of immigrants.”1 These two positions continued to define the range of options open to the Left, but by the 1990s the mainstream position on integration, shared by many on the left and the right, was the “right to indifference,” in the formulation of former Prime Minister Michel Rocard. This meant the right of the state to ignore cultural differences and demand that all those who wished to live in France take on French values and participate fully in French social and political life. The debate became refocused, away from the social and economic conditions of life for residents or citizens of diverse circumstances, and on the conditions for becoming permanent residents or citizens. Now the public discourse became one of “immigrants” versus “French.” Even those born in France but who were in socially suspect categories (for example, North Africans or Muslims) were included in the former group (Favell 2001). Multiculturalism remains as a negative model against which to fashion proper Republicanism. In his testimony to the 2003 Stasi Commission, created to deliberate on religious signs in schools, Education Ministry official Alain Seksig complained that the overemphasis on difference during the Mitterrand years was one of the factors leading to divisions in the classrooms today.

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I was a teacher in Belleville [an area in Paris with a high percentage of immigrants] during the 1970s, and we said to parents from other countries: “You have to speak French at home if you want your children to succeed at school.” Over time we changed our tune. The Council of Europe and our Ministry encouraged an intercultural pedagogy, with teaching of languages and cultures of origin. Now we say: “If you wish your children to succeed and to feel at ease, speak their language of origin at home; otherwise we will have schizophrenic children who fall through the cracks.” We have slipped toward the obligation to promote difference and membership in a community. At Belleville we created an association that put on a musical comedy with a song that went: “Come see Belleville, when you change houses you change country, we are not of this country, we come all from over there.” I began to ask myself about this. Mitterrand visited this school. This is far from our objective; we are all from here even if we experience different influences (Testimony before Commission Stasi, September 23, 2003).

It is against this background of regret and self-criticism that many French officials in those ministries dealing with cultural differences—principally education, interior, and social affairs—now emphasize the importance of French immigrants leaving their values behind when they enter France. When in 2004 I interviewed the official in charge of implementing the new “contract of integration and welcome” to be signed by immigrants, I rather naively said that of course an immigrant should not have to forget his or her traditions and heritage, thinking the remark anodyne. She did not find it so. She responded, “Well, yes they do have to set them aside. When you become French you have to set aside the older values and practices and adopt new ones. Otherwise, you develop a schizophrenic personality. Of course you could retrieve them later on; they do not entirely disappear.” Thus the meaning of “equality” in French life is first and foremost an equality of citizens in the public sphere; it requires an abstracting of a common identity from particular and divisive ones to produce a high degree of sameness. The schools are a primary place for creating that sameness, and thus anything that indicates difference—such as headscarves, acts of prayer, or ethnic markers of all kinds—is considered to be ipso facto divisive. Liberty has little to do with these concerns, and liberty was legally and philosophically given a new social institution by the laws of 1901 and 1905 that regulate associations. Whether they are religious or cultural, associations are legitimate in French society if and only if they are constructed out of free association—that is, if they do not constrain their members. Once society had “escaped from religion,” in the words of the philosopher Marcel Gauchet (1985), it placed in the individual the powers to create identities and institutions in social life. In this sense, French society is individualistic, in that only the individual is ontologically primary. Indeed, the primacy of state-defined public life depends on this individualism, for it is individualism that prevents

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corporate bodies from reemerging as dangerous intermediary groups, fomenting communalism.

Schooling and Equality Although the French school system has changed in many fundamental ways in the past century, it retains the creation marks of its several parts. Pedagogy was developed to indoctrinate: the earliest primary and secondary schools were organized in the sixteenth century by Catholics and Protestants, and part of their mission was to ensure that children retained the religious convictions of their parents. During most of the nineteenth century, primary education, largely in the hands of Catholic clergy, was intended to instill a minimum of moral education in the minds of the people. Alongside these devices for inculcating devotion in the masses were institutions called collèges, for the most part run by Jesuits, which took a privileged few pupils from their early years up to the university. The high school (lycée) was created by Napoleon in 1802 in order to create an elite civil-service corps that would help him govern France. Competitive exams assured that only a small number of highly trained pupils would enter the lycée and that fewer would graduate. Those who excelled would continue on, not to the universities, but to the higher postsecondary schools, the grandes écoles, that trained young men to become engineers, accountants, or full-service bureaucrats. These schools exist today alongside newer functional equivalents. Within the lycée system, one “master subject” has always played a key role of gatekeeping. Once, it was one’s expertise in Latin that acted as a global selection mechanism of students; today it is excellence at mathematics and the choice of the science and math track at around age sixteen. This hierarchy relegates all technical and professional studies, as well as social sciences, biology, and music, to the second rank. The major school reforms, and indeed the creation of the public schools themselves, happened during the 1890s, under Education Minister Jules Ferry. Primary schools became free and required for all. Two other types of schools continued to take a small number of students of privileged backgrounds from the primary level up to the preparatory years for higher education, only now they were run by the government. Municipalities ran collèges, and the state ran lycées; both charged fees. These new public schools, the “schools of the Republic” or “schools of Jules Ferry,” were created in direct opposition to Catholic schools, which gradually remerged as legally recognized “free schools” after failed efforts to wipe them out in 1903 and 1904. In many French villages and towns, the two kinds of schools existed side-by-side and in more or less restrained competition for students’ bodies and souls. But the French state gave financial assis-

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tance to religious schools as it did to churches. The Debré law of 1959 set out what has become the settled formula for such aid: the state pays the salaries of religious-school teachers and a portion of the additional costs on condition that the schools teach the state curriculum, keep religious instruction to a single, weekly, optional class, and admit pupils without regard to their religious beliefs. The public schools thus developed out of two related efforts: to create a highly selective and centralized system for creating a state elite corps, and to fight the twin sources of backwardness, regional provincialism and religious obscurantism. Taken together, these legacies leave little room for parents to have a say in their children’s education. Only since 1968 have parents played any role in school governance, and then they only did through the pressures brought by the three main national associations of parents. The American notion of local, community-elected school boards seems to be from another planet. Teachers answer to a national bureaucracy, and most who find themselves in poor areas seek to be transferred. Although the system saw further changes during the first half of the twentieth century, up through the 1960s the primary school was the only uniform level of education—that is, the system that was intended to teach all children the same material. At the end of the primary school, at the the cinquième level, a pupil was oriented toward one of several different types of colleges. These types correspond roughly to general versus vocational schools in the United States. What came to be called the collège unique, a uniform middle school without explicit internal tracking, dates only from 1975 (the Haby reform). Although generally applauded for its ideals of equality and fairness, it could not overcome the de facto segregation of students by residence. Under this new system, the de facto disparity among middle schools was followed by further tracking at graduation. Most pupils who came from working class or immigrant backgrounds went to vocational high schools (lycées professionnels). Pupils from middle class backgrounds generally went to the local general high school and usually on to universities. The elite went to a very small number of elite public schools, mostly in the center of Paris, that prepared their pupils for entry into the prestigious postsecondary “greater schools” (grandes écoles), the professional training schools for careers in civil service or higher education. This three-tier system changed on paper around 1985 as part of a move toward the “democratization” of the school system in France. This change meant keeping more pupils in the collège and the lycée, as well as steering more of the lycée pupils toward postsecondary education. The battle cry was “80 percent to the bac,” meaning that 80 percent of the pupils would take the baccalaureate exam, usually taken after a year of preparation following the final year of lycée. The demographic shift was enormous: in ten years (1985 to 1995) the rate of sitting for and passing the baccalaureate exam went from

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30 percent to 63 percent (Beaud 2002). But the effect was to simply delay the moment of differentiating between those who would succeed and those who would not, and in rendering the probabilities of success less transparent. The illusion of democratization was that everyone could become a white collar worker; the reality was that jobs grew scarcer, and many of those who succeeded at the baccalaureate exam found themselves relegated to poor universities and minimum-wage jobs. Before the change, pupils had been clearly demarcated into groups at several stages. Many went into a professional lycée, which enabled them to pass a “bac pro,” good enough for factory work or subsequent skills training but not for entry into postsecondary education. After the change, many more students went to a general lycée, with the regular baccalaureate exam at the end. Many found that only the lesser-quality universities, which must accept all applicants, were open to them. The sociologist Stéphane Beaud studied these new lycée students in an urban periphery of Montbéliard, located on the Swiss border and where the first Peugeot factories were located (Beaud 2002). He found that around 1990, pupils began to speak of entering a general lycée as “the normal path” or “the straight path,” and they began to consider the professional lycée, roughly the equivalent of a vocational high school in the United States, to be stigmatizing and “sub-normal.” But the passage from a collège where pupils from working class and immigrant backgrounds predominated to a more socially mixed lycée often had a psychologically devastating effect. Now one could find oneself as the only person in the category of “immigrant.” But the change also led the lycées to compete among themselves for the best students and to accept a large number of new lycée students from the housing projects. During this massive enlargement of the lycée population, during roughly 1987 to 1994, lycées simply expanded rather than transformed: they had more classes but also larger ones, with up to thirty-five pupils per class. To an increasing extent, the schools developed informal, internal tracking by type of academic interest. In the lycées that had attracted a majority bourgeois and central-city clientele, the choices that pupils made of certain electives determined which classes they sat in throughout the day: those choosing to study Latin or computer science, for example, tended to be of bourgeois background. These students were thus together for the entire day and were referred to as the “good classes” by teachers. Those who chose sports formed the “bad” classes. (This mechanism is much like that which operates in American public schools.) The end result of the collège unique policy was to increase the degree of internal tracking, to exacerbate differences in quality from one school to the next, and to create some truly mixed classes that are generally judged to be very difficult to teach. To understand why the new school structure had this particular social outcome, we need to look at the mechanisms that created geographical segregation in France.

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Structures of Exclusion During the period between the two world wars, and again after 1945, France brought large numbers of men from elsewhere in Europe, French Algeria, and its colonies, to work in French industry. They were housed in slums around the edges of major cities and near factories, setting the topography of inequality that persists today. These labor and housing policies left poorer populations living on the geographical and thus social margins of French cities— in marked contrast to the inner-city segregation of American blacks. Their neighborhoods are not museums to the past; they are populated by recent immigrants as well as the descendants of older ones, because immigration continued even after the 1974 halting of most labor migration. According to a Le Monde newspaper article on January 4, 2006 (Van Eeckhout 2006), about three-quarters of legal immigrants arrive in France today through claims of marriage or family ties, mainly when a French citizen returns to a country of origin to find a spouse. For an example of this mixing of old and new, we can consider the Créteil académie, the governing unit of school districts, which includes three of the major catchment areas for immigrants near Paris: the prefectures of SeineSaint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne. Each year, between three thousand and four thousand new immigrant school children arrive in the district with no background in the French language. They are of seventy different nationalities, but most come from the same countries that have provided the majority of immigrants. Thus in any one class, children whose parents or grandparents immigrated to France sit, desk by desk, with a new “first generation” from these same countries. This story is not of unbroken gloom, but it is full of unintended consequences. Physical conditions in the outer cities improved markedly during the 1960s and 1970s, when the state built huge complexes of apartments as low-rent housing (habitations à loyers modérés, or HLM), which each housed thousands of families. These new complexes were heartily welcomed at the time. They were clean, had toilets, and at first they housed together native French and immigrants from all parts. But better-off families (especially native French and Asians) were able to move out and buy small homes, and as the nearby factories closed their doors in the 1970s and 1980s, those who stayed found themselves increasingly without work. The housing projects became traps rather than springboards, and it is the children who grew up in them who burst onto the front pages of newspapers throughout the world in the November 2005 riots. Perpetuation of inequality works in myriad and sometimes subtle ways, starting with interactions between housing and schooling. Your neighbor’s fortunes and hopes affect yours, and in France poor immigrants tend to live next to other poor immigrants. This immigrant concentration is about twice

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as high as in the United States, and it had its beginnings in the state policies toward immigrant labor. It has effects on schooling and on employment. Who sits in the school desk next to you has significant effects on how likely you are to complete school. These effects help explain why twenty years of special state investments in poorly performing school districts (zones d’éducation prioritaires, or the ZEP) have had no measurable effect on school success, as was reported in Le Monde on September 16, 2005 (Le Monde 2005). These concentration effects continue beyond school: immigrants earn much less than do native-born French who have enjoyed the same level of education (Maurin 2004). People in the outer cities have high unemployment rates, but the official numbers understate the realities that youth face. A town may have 20 percent unemployment—twice the national average—but for younger residents, the rate may be 30 percent; for those who left school and throng the projects, the rate may be 50 to 60 percent. Discrimination makes the already poor chances that these youths have even worse. A 2005 report on employment is one of the rare ones in France to have examined the difference that ethnicity makes. The authors conclude that having a North African background makes you 2.5 times more likely to be unemployed than if you are (or more importantly, if you look and sound) “native French,” controlling for level of education. It found that this difference has changed little in fifteen years (Meurs, Pailhé, and Simon 2005). Ironically, the low-cost housing projects, though often blamed for social problems, serve to counteract ethnic self-segregation even as they reinforce economic segregation. It can be difficult to find a place in some HLMs, as people compete to get out off unsafe and filthy privately run apartments, so many end up wherever the housing office sees fit to put them. As a result, blacks, North Africans, and “native” French live side-by-side in the projects. However, there are boundaries, particularly between blacks and North Africans. Dating across those lines is at your own risk; in 2005 one blackbrown relationship led to a conflict and a killing, prompting then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to make unfavorable remarks about the residents, which some say heightened social tensions. These projects are not, then, ethnic enclaves; if they reinforce a sense of exclusion, that sense is not based in a racial, ethnic, or religious identity. The sense of exclusion can sometimes be alleviated by measures that change the physical structure of the projects or the employment prospects of their residents. For example, beginning in the late 1990s, the Caravelle project in the Seine-Saint-Denis, once an unbroken, prisonlike, grim enclosure of large connected buildings, was broken into smaller units, with parks, sports areas, and a new commercial center. According to an interview in October 2006 with Villeneuve-le-Garenne housing officials, the changes were enough to attract hundreds of families from elsewhere in the

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region to apply for vacant units and to bring about a drop in crime to onethird the previous rate. But geographic differences in social conditions are nonetheless translated into differences in schooling trajectories through a series of steps and mechanisms. By law, public schools take their pupils from the surrounding neighborhoods, thus reinforcing the effects of residential segregation. But matters are even worse. Parental strategies exacerbate residential effects, because many of the better-off parents manage to place their children in schools in a better district—40 percent of Paris-area parents are estimated to have done so through legal methods, and an unknown number have done so through illegal ones. These strategies for getting around the rules make the concentration of immigrants in any one school 2 to 2.5 times what it otherwise would be if the geographical rules for school assignments (la carte scolaire) were followed (Felouzis, Liot, and Perroton 2005). Within schools, teachers channel pupils very early towards those professions that seem to best fit their social and cultural profile. High schools have never lost their essential gatekeeping quality. Social-class differences show up massively in the schools that children attend, the tracks that they pursue (for example, math, arts, or technology), whether they take the baccalaureate exam or another less demanding exam, and what they do afterwards. Ghislaine Hudson, principal of a school south of Paris, points to the way in which pupils are evaluated: if they are weak in any subject, they fail and have to repeat a year; thus, weaker students experience failure after failure, year after year. Pupils who fail together also live in the same neighborhoods, adding to their sense of class determinism. As two sociologists recently wrote in Libération (November 9, 2005), young people in the poor outer cities experience schools not as a way to advance but as “a site of selection that turns their social fate into so many personal humiliations” (Lapeyronnie and Mucchielli 2005). Better-off parents have private school options, and 40 percent of all French parents place a child at one time or another in a private school (Troger 2001). Some students experience their channeling as particularly discouraging. In November 2005, in the middle of the riots, students in a high school in a Paris suburb wrote President Jacques Chirac to protest the way that members of the cabinet spoke about the poor suburbs. The students were in the final year of a bioservices track in the school, a somewhat opaque term that refers to foodand health-related service industry jobs. They explained to a reporter that when they arrived in their first year at the high school, all the students who came from a “difficult” neighborhood were oriented toward a curricular section of the school (called Segpa) that prepared pupils for low-level jobs. Some found themselves signed up for the bioservices track, which had two specialties: technical food agent and building maintenance and hygiene. These titles sounded good, but they meant cooking meals and cleaning floors.

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As reported in Libération on December 16, 2005, the students considered the entire Segpa section to be “for morons; it’s shameful” (Gros 2005). French efforts at combating this segregation involve forms of affirmative action. After the riots of 2005, the government proposed more measures to aid between 200 and 250 middle schools in the zones qualified as ZEP. Some of the postsecondary higher schools, most notably the prestigious Sciences Po, have created special parallel tracks toward admission for students from the ZEP. These efforts have generally been judged to have succeeded for the students who were admitted. The best preparatory schools, which prepare students who have passed their baccalaureate year for the entry examinations for the higher schools, have begun looking for qualified students from the poor suburbs and provinces. Several preparatory schools have opened in the poor suburbs themselves. The efforts to skim off the cream of the ZEP do little to challenge the French model of educational success, which is founded on the idea of a hierarchy of pathways into adulthood. Success remains defined in terms of admission to the higher schools, which itself requires admission to a small number of the best postsecondary preparatory schools. As an illustration, according to a December 16, 2005, Libération article, the preparatory section of one high school, Henri IV, accounts for close to one-half the total class admitted each year to the École Normale Supérieur on the rue d’Ulm (Davidenkoff and Gros 2005). Within all schools, even Henri IV, the classes are informally divided by teachers into the “good” and “bad” classes. Students are ranked; for the most driven students, receiving anything less than the top rank at a higher school can be devastating.

Culture, Multicultures, and Pedagogy Culture in the sense of civilization occupies a major part of France’s public school curriculum, and it includes world cultures and their contributions to civilization. Islam is generally presented as the source of great thinkers and kingdoms in the past, for example. But the various cultural backgrounds of school pupils are not supposed to play any role in the curriculum. Indeed, in many respects the French school denies the relevance of ethnic, racial, and religious diversity for French society. The school does not collect any information about ethnic or religious identity. In one high school text, the concept of ethnicity is introduced and applied to a number of countries, including the United States, but not to France (Schiffauer et al. 2004). But cultural differences exist nonetheless, and school life shapes pupils’ sense of who they are. Many pupils whose parents or grandparents immigrated to France develop a sense of who they are that is largely cultural, reflecting their parents’ origins, or is largely religious. In February 2004, I interviewed three Muslim women about their life experiences, some of which

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had to do with the school. One of the three, Souad, emphasized the role played by French schools. Her parents came from Algeria, and she was born in France. However, throughout her middle school, teachers would ask students to write down their nationality, and she would always write “Algerian.” It was not until high school that a teacher told her, “You were born in France, you have a French identity card, so you are French.” She described how pupils self-segregated in school: At middle and high school people sort themselves by group, as Maghrebins or as French. I felt that I shared more with Maghrebins than I did with the French. Already in the sixième (11 years old) we felt the difference between those whose parents had money and the others. They put me in the advanced section because I had received a “20” in math the previous year [an unusually high grade]; they thought they perhaps had an intellectual. It traumatized me that they put me with the others [French]. There was one girl who said, “you, you’re Arab, don’t get close to me.” I was the “Arab of the classroom.“ It was really a shock. I was the only one, and I found it very hard to make friends; I made one. You find yourself with people; you do not know their culture; you feel very bad, feel still more that you are not well integrated. “We don’t want anything to do with you, you are Arab, dirty.” They were taught this from their parents, the racism. So the following year (cinquième) I came down to the ordinary level and was with people like me, of Maghrebin origin, and it was easier to get along, without the racism. And I really feel that the school system contributes to that because it is they who make the difference from the beginning, with only with French people at one level and all Maghrebins and others in the other already in middle school, so it’s normal that later on the racism will grow in people’s minds. So the schools have a responsibility.

Another student, Maryam, added, We were in groups, we felt a sort of complicity among ourselves. We did tease among ourselves, “Oh, be careful, you’re Tunisian.” The Algerians did this even among themselves, Kabyles and people from Algiers did have a tension among them. But it was among us, friendly.

What is the response of teachers to the fact of cultural and religious differences among students? Some try to substitute a discourse of nationality and citizenship for one of foreign origins. But others draw on notions of “culture” and “origins” to explain the deficiencies of their poorer students. Some come to assume that pupils of “Arab origin” or “North African origin” should be expected to behave in particular ways. The best-known recent expression of this idea is the book, The Lost Territories of the Republic, edited by the teacher Georges Bensoussan, who writes under the pseudonym Emmanuel Brenner (Brenner et al. 2002). The book features testimonies by middle- and high school teachers about acts of com-

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munalism committed by Muslim students in poor districts in and around Paris. The teachers combine accounts of clearly offensive acts (such as insulting Jewish students), acts that might attest to sheer ignorance (such as contesting a teacher’s version of the Shoah), and acts that offend only within the specific logic of laïcité in the French school (such as breaking the Ramadan fast on school grounds). The offenders are Muslims, and the authors blame “Arab Muslim culture” for these communalist actions. This culture, they argue, refuses mixité and therefore refuses integration into the Republic. Anecdotal accounts of teachers talking among themselves illustrate the use of “Arab ways” as explanations of pupils’ behavior (Castany 2003). In a similar vein, after the riots in fall 2005, some politicians and intellectuals argued that cultural deficits in the outer cities were to blame. One minister, albeit a lowly one, said polygamy among West Africans led parents to neglect their children, who then could indulge their desire to burn cars. On November 23, 2005, 153 deputies in the National Assembly petitioned the Ministry of Justice to prosecute rap groups for inciting “anti-White racism” and “hatred of France.” The prominent intellectual Alain Finkielkraut, in a response to his critics published on November 27, 2005, in Le Monde, decried the search for social causes of the riots and declared that the real problem was hatred of France and that this hatred came from “the Arab-Muslim world” (Cypel and Kauffmann 2005). A small number of teachers and sociologists write about ethnic difference and identity in the classroom. Contributors to the Cahiers Pédagogiques, a reform-oriented educational review available in textbook stores, as well as a research team headed by Françoise Lorcerie in Aix-en-Provence, have focused their attention on “ethnic plurality” in the classroom. But their goal is to make clear the nature of racism and “ethnicization” in order to combat both. In other words, ethnic differences are problems, as indicated by the title of the major book on the topic, The School and the Ethnic Challenge (Castany 2003; Lorcerie 2003). There is little if any pedagogy or teaching practice in France that considers recognizing ethnic, cultural, or racial differences among students as a positive element in school life. Those teachers who incorporate something of their students’ backgrounds into their lessons do so in a largely defensive way: to counter or to anticipate criticisms from students about the teachers’ own biases. Current proposals to teach religion as a social and historical fact are supposed to do so without diluting the unity of the classroom and without touching on matters of theology.

Conclusion French education rests on the working theory that any intelligent pupil who succeeds in school will succeed in society. The theory presupposes a number

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of mechanisms, one of which is the capacity of the school to isolate classroom life from real life, or the external conditions in which pupils spend most of their time. One can give this assumption a justification from a position within liberal political theory; namely, one must try to give each pupil a fresh start, a measure of social autonomy, and a chance to develop his or her own value commitments outside the constraints of their home lives. More recently, the importance of social mixing in the classroom has become integral to this theory. The promotion of the collège unique from the 1970s onward was based on the idea that tracking happened too soon and mixing of pupils from different backgrounds would produce a positive outcome for society as well as for the individual pupils. However, given the single-metric structure of value in French education, this policy change merely pushed forward the moment of truth, when some found themselves in a bioservices track and others on their way to Le Polytechnique (written with the definite article because there is only one polytechnic institute worth aspiring to). Because having a nonmainstream cultural background overlaps to a considerable degree with finding oneself on a low-value educational track, students already on the margins experience school as a series of humiliations. No society is completely successful at making all its young citizens feel that they are accepted wholly by those with power and resources. France simply has its own particular ways of failing, which turn on the difficulty of countenancing a society that can enable people to live together successfully and also promote the idea that many diverse sets of backgrounds and values have positive, perhaps even equal, value. Equality has its limits, and they are found at its borders with “multiculturalism.” But France is not as exceptional as sometimes is claimed, and there are similarities and convergences with the United States. First, one of the key pillars of French policies is a concern for guarding the individual’s right to change values, orientations, and skills. This right is seen as underpinning social integration because of a second pillar of teaching the shared commitments of French society. Thus Republicanism can be seen as having a liberal pedagogical base and thus, for our purposes, a basis for analysis and critique that it shares with the United States. In both societies, it makes sense to ask how well schools are doing in supporting the individual life projects of individuals. Secondly, France is moving toward the United States on matters of combating discrimination and inequality. Despite its deep allergies to publicly recognizing ethnic identities and differences, French officials and intellectuals of multiple political persuasions argue that France needs to practice “positive discrimination,” or, in other words, “affirmative action.” (Indeed, the latter term describes French policies better than the first, but, because it is associated with American policies and by many with quotas, it cannot be

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used.) Private industry, elite schools, and government officials are all engaged in various forms of “positive discrimination.” This engagement rests on what we may characterize as a liberal concern with equality of opportunity. On the other hand, the United States is moving toward France in its insistence on formal and public equality—and thus to some extent identity—of all citizens. Before court decisions pushed American affirmative action from individual-based to place- or institution-based preferences, France was already practicing place-based aid through its ZEP designations. Current efforts to encourage poor pupils to prepare for the higher schools follow the same logic: they are based on agreements with specific schools, not on ethnic characteristics of individual pupils.

Notes 1. These two letters set out what continue to be the two major positions taken by the political left, represented in 2004 by, on the one hand, the Socialist Party (now joined by SOS-Racisme), which argued strongly for the 2004 antiscarf law, and, on the other hand, a coalition of antiexclusion movements grouped under the banner “One School for Everyone.”

References Beaud, Stéphane. 2002. 80% au bac . . . Et après? [80% on the Bac . . . And Then?]. Paris: La Découverte. Bowen, John R. 2007. Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Brenner, Emmanuel, Arlette Corvarola, Sophie Ferhadjian, Élise Jacquard, Barbara Lefebvre, Iannis Roder, Marie Zeitgeber, and other college and high school professors. 2002. Les territoires perdus de la République: Antisémitisme, racisme et sexisme en milieu scolaire [The Lost Territories of the Republic: Antisemitism, Racism, and Sexism in the Schools]. Paris: Mille et une nuits. Castany, Jacqueline. 2003. “Intégration au ‘quotidian’” [“‘Routine’ Integration”]. Cahiers Pédagogiques (December): 27–28. Cypel, Sylvain, and Sylvie Kauffmann. 2005. “Alain Finkielkraut: ‘J’assume’” [“Alain Finkielkraut: ‘I Admit It’”]. Le Monde, November 11. Davidenkoff, Emmanuel, and Marie-Joëlle Gros. 2005. “Classes prépas : la bataille Paris-banlieue” [“Preperatory Classes: The Battle Between Paris and the Suburbs”]. Libération December 16. Favell, Adrian. 2001. Philosophies of Integration. 2nd ed. Houndsmith, U.K.: Palgrave. Felouzis, Georges, Françoise Liot, and Joëlle Perroton. 2005. L’apartheid scolaire: Enquête sur la ségrégation ethnique dans les collèges [Scholarly Apartheid: Survey on Ethnic Segregation in Middle Schools]. Paris: Seuil. Gauchet, Marcel. 1985. Le désenchantement du monde: une histoire politique de la

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religion [Disenchantment in the World: A Political History of Religion]. Paris: Gallimard. Gros, Marie-Joëlle. 2005. “Monsieur le Président, ils vous ont fait une lettre” [“Mister President, They Wrote You a Letter”]. Libération, December 16. Kastoryano, Riva. 2002. Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Lapeyronnie, Didier, and Laurent Mucchielli. 2005. “Piégés par la République” [“Trapped by the Republic”]. Libération, November 9. Le Monde. 2005. “Selon l’Insee, les ZEP n’auraient pas d’effets significatifs sur les résultats des éleves” [“According to INSEE, the ZEP Program Has Not Significantly Changed Pupils’ Results”]. Le Monde, September 16. Lorcerie, Françoise, editor. 2003. L’École et le défi ethnique [The School and the Ethnic Challenge]. Paris: Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique. Maurin, Éric. 2004. Le ghetto français [The French Ghetto]. Paris: Seuil et La République des idées. Meurs, Dominique, Ariane Pailhé, and Patrick Simon. 2005. Mobilité intergénérationelle et persistence des inégalités [Intergenerational Mobility and the Persistence of Inequalities]. Paris: INED. Rochefort, Florence. 2002. “Foulard, genre et laïcité en 1989” [“The Scarf, Gender, and Secularity in 1989”]. Vingtième Siècle 75(July–September): 145–56. Schiffauer, Werner, Gerd Baumann, Riva Kastoryano, and Steven Vertovec. 2004. Civil Enculturation: Nation-State, Schools, and Ethnic Difference in Four European Countries. Oxford: Bergahn Books. Troger, Vincent. 2001. L’École [The School]. Paris: Le cavalier bleu. Van Eeckhout, Laetitua. 2006. “Immigration familiale: les faits” [“Family Immigration: The Facts”]. Le Monde, January 4. Weil, Patrick. 2005. La République et sa diverité [The Republic and its Diversity]. Paris: Seuil.

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8 DIVERSITY, TRANSFORMATIVE CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION, AND SCHOOL REFORM James A. Banks

T

he increasing recognition and legitimacy of diversity within the United States and around the world require educators to rethink citizenship and citizenship education. Historically within the United States, as well as within other nations, the major goal of citizenship education has been to develop national patriotism (Castles 2004; Westheimer 2007). However, approaches to developing national patriotism failed to help students develop critical thinking skills; alienated them from their homes and community cultures and languages; and failed to help them develop cosmopolitan attitudes, values, and behaviors that are needed to function effectively in today’s global world society. There are limitations to traditional or mainstream approaches to citizenship education, making a transformative approach to citizenship education essential. Schools can be reformed to implement a transformative approach to citizenship education, which enables students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to become thoughtful and active citizens in a global and interdependent world community.

Diversity: Challenges and Opportunities The rich and growing racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity in American schools and in schools around the world present both challenges and opportunities to nation-states and to educators (Banks 2004a; Luchtenberg 2004). American classrooms are experiencing the largest influx of immigrant students since the beginning of the twentieth century. About one million immigrants make the United States their home each year (Martin and Midgley 1999). Almost four million legal immigrants settled in the United States between 2000 and 2004, and only 15 percent came from nations in Europe. Most (64 percent) came from Mexico and from nations in

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Asia, Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2004). A large but undetermined number of undocumented immigrants also enter the United States each year. The New York Times estimated that 12 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States in 2007 (“Immigration Sabotage,” June 4, 2007, A22). In the thirty-year period between 1973 and 2004, the percentage of students of color in American public schools increased from 22 to 43 percent. If current trends continue, students of color might equal or exceed the percentage of white students in American public schools within one or two decades. An article in The New York Times on August 27, 2006, reported that ethnic-minority students already exceed the number of white students in six states: California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas (“In Schools Across U.S., the Melting Pot Overflows,” A7, 16). Linguistic diversity is also increasing in American schools. In 2000, 18 percent of the total United States population ages five and older spoke a language other than English at home (Shin and Bruno 2003). English-language learners are the fastest growing population in American public schools (Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001). Religious diversity is also growing in American schools as well as in schools around the world. Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the United States as well as in several European nations, such as France and the United Kingdom (Cesari 2004). The influence of an increasingly ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse population in American schools, colleges, and universities is and will continue to be enormous. Schools in the United States and around the world face complex educational issues when trying to respond to the problems wrought by increasing diversity and international migration in ways consistent with their democratic ideologies and declarations. There is a wide gap between the democratic ideals in Western nations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and the Untied States, and the daily educational experiences of minority groups in schools. Ethnic-minority students in the United States as well as in Western European nations such as France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands often experience discrimination and marginalization in school and the society writ large because of their cultural, linguistic, and religious differences (Banks 2004a; Luchtenberg 2004). The rich diversity of American schools presents problems to which educators must respond in order to help all students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to become effective citizens in the national civic community. The academic-achievement gap between ethnic-minority and majority-group students is one of the most complex and intractable problems faced by American schools and schools around the world; it defies facile analyses and responses (Banks and Banks 2004; Luchtenberg 2004). In her American Educational Research Association (AERA) address, Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) uses “education debt” when referring to this problem in order to shift

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the stigmatizing and negative focus from low-income and minority students to the long-term underlying problems stemming from inequality in the United States educational system and the larger society. Diversity also provides rich opportunities to create learning environments in which diversity is valued for enriching instruction, enhancing the academic achievement of students from diverse groups, as well as contributing to a better education for all students. As William Bowen and Derek Bok insightfully point out, a good education requires learning about and experiencing diversity in an educational environment with students from different races, cultures, and groups (1998).

Schools and the Larger Society Schools mirror the problems within the larger society, yet they are often called upon and expected to solve intractable issues such as racial conflict and poverty that have not been resolved within the larger society. As educational researchers such as Jean Anyon (2005) and Pedro Noguera (2003) point out, schools are limited in what they can do to solve societal problems. However, they can make an important difference in the lives of children, especially if they work jointly with other institutions. School can make a significant difference in the lives of children and future citizens by enabling them to become high academic achievers. Research indicates that the culture of some schools fosters academic achievement, and the culture of other schools does not. Schools of the same social-class composition have significantly different effects on student achievement. Some schools in low-income communities—as well as in high-income communities—have cultures that foster high academic achievement. Researchers called these schools “effective” or “improving” schools (Brookover et al. 1979; Levine and Lezotte 2001). Other schools in both low- and high-income communities have cultures that do not foster high academic achievement. Educational researchers have identified the important characteristics of effective or improving schools. They include the following: • • • • • •

a safe and orderly environment a shared faculty commitment to improve achievement an orientation focused on identifying and solving problems high faculty cohesion and collaboration high faculty input in decision making a schoolwide emphasis on recognizing positive performance (Levine and Lezotte 2001, 525)

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Approaches to Citizenship Education in Multicultural Nations An important role of schools in Western democratic multicultural nations is to prepare students to be thoughtful and active citizens. In the highly technological and service-oriented world in which we live, students must acquire basic skills in school subjects such as English, language arts, math, and science in order to gain productive employment in what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls the “flat world” in which we live (2005). In the flat world described by Thomas Friedman, students educated in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City must compete for jobs with workers educated in Bombay, India, Beijing, China, and Karachi, Pakistan. Technology enables employers to outsource many jobs to developing nations, where labor is often a fraction of the cost of labor in major American cities. While literacy and quantitative skills are essential for students who live in highly technological and service-oriented democratic nations, they are not sufficient. Students also need to acquire the knowledge, skills, and commitment to take action that will deepen democracy in their nations and make their societies more just and humane. Democracies are fragile and rather new inventions in human history (Dahl 2000). Their continuation cannot be taken for granted. Rather, their perpetuation requires actions by citizens who can and will participate in civic communities that are characterized by deliberation (Gutmann 1987), negotiation, and compromise. As Walter Parker (2003) points out, democrats are made, not born. Schools are essential for the perpetuation of a democratic society. Schools should prepare students from all racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups to become reflective and active citizens of the national civic culture and community (Banks 2007). This goal should be attained in ways that are consistent with the idealized values of American society, which include civic equality, recognition (Gutmann 2004), and cultural democracy (Ramírez and Castañeda 1974). If we honor these values, then we must help students from diverse groups to become effective citizens of the United States and the world without alienating them from their home cultures or violating their cultural and linguistic identities (Wong Fillmore 2005). In the past, schools in the United States embraced an assimilationist or mainstream approach to citizenship education (Banks 2004b, 2007). Schools tried to make students effective citizens of the nation-state by alienating them from their home and community cultures and assimilating them into the mainstream society (Lomawaima and McCarty 2006; Wong Fillmore 2005). Forcing students to become alienated from their home and community cultures in order to obtain an education violates some of the fundamental princi-

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ples of a democratic and just society. Students should be able to maintain those aspects of their home and community cultures that help them to function effectively in their cultural community and provide them with a sense of kinship and belonging (Gonzáles, Moll, and Amanti 2005; Ramírez and Castañeda 1974). Assimilationists worry that students who maintain attachments to their community cultures and languages may not develop sufficiently strong attachments to the nation-state or become effective participants in the civic culture and community. Assimilationists have “a zero sum conception of identity” (Kymlicka 2004, xiv). As political philosopher Will Kymlicka points out, identities are usually “multiple, nested, and overlapping. Members of minority groups are likely to become more attached to their country, not less, when it affirms the legitimacy of their ethnic identity and the value of their cultural heritage” (2004, xiv). Rather than being harmful to a nation-state, citizens who have clarified cultural identifications and are rooted in their home and community cultures and languages are able to be more effective citizens than are individuals who have confused and ambivalent cultural identifications and attachments or who have been forced to become alienated from their home and community cultures and languages (Banks 2004a; Wong Fillmore 2005). Assimilationist, or mainstream citizenship education—which tries to make students effective citizens by alienating them from their home and community cultures— is grounded in mainstream knowledge and assumptions and reinforces the status quo and the dominant power relationships in society (Banks 1996). It does not challenge or disrupt the class, race, and gender discrimination within the schools and society. It emphasizes memorizing facts about constitutions and other legal documents, learning about various branches of government, and developing national loyalty to the nation-state (Westheimer 2007). Critical-thinking skills, decision-making skills, and action are not important components of mainstream citizenship education. This is the kind of citizenship education that is practiced in most social-studies classrooms in the United States. Alternatively, transformative citizenship education draws upon the cultures that students bring from their homes and communities to school; it enables students to acquire the knowledge, skills, and values needed to challenge inequality within their communities, their nations, and the world, and to take actions to create just and democratic multicultural communities and societies (Banks 2006). Rather than alienate students from their home and community cultures and languages, teachers should build upon the cultures and languages of students from diverse groups in order to enhance their learning (Moll and González 2004). Research indicates that teachers can increase the academic achievement of students from diverse groups if they make use of and build upon the knowledge, skills, and languages these stu-

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dents acquire in the informal learning environments of their homes and communities (Banks et al. 2007; González, Moll, and Amanti 2005; Heath 1983; Lee 1995).

Racial and Social-Class Inequality in Schools When schools and classrooms become microcosms and exemplars of democracy and social justice, they help students acquire democratic attitudes and learn how to practice democracy (Osler and Starkey 2005). As John Dewey stated, “all genuine education comes through experience” (1959, 13). Lawrence Kohlberg’s idea of democratic just schools exemplifies the concept of democracy in action in schools (Schrader 1990). Kohlberg created a cluster school within Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School 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, Wasserman, and Richardson 1975). Rather than practicing and exemplifying democracy, there is ample empirical evidence that schools often implement mainstream citizenship education that reinforces and reproduces the class, race, and gender stratification within the larger society. Insightful and careful studies in the United States (Oakes 2005), the United Kingdom (Gillborn and Youdell 2000; Tomlinson 2001), and other nations (Luchtenberg 2004) document the widespread inequality that exists within schools. Popular accounts such as the one by Jonathan Kozol support the findings of empirical studies (2005). Jonathan Kozol describes the poor physical and teaching conditions in American urban schools in poignant detail. He contrasts these conditions with the well-equipped and supported schools in some of the nation’s high-income suburbs. He calls the widespread educational equality in the United States the “shame of the nation.” Jeannie Oakes, Rebecca Joseph, and Kate Muir (2004) describe how, as a result of the lack of access to high-level math courses in inner-city schools, many Latino and African American students lack the math prerequisites to gain admission to the prestigious University of California campuses. In her trenchant studies of tracking—a system of streaming that involves assigning students to courses based on their presumed knowledge, ability, and skill levels—Jeannie Oakes (2005) describes how schools in the United States perpetuate and reinforce inequality. Research by Jeannie Oakes and Beth Rubin indicates that there is a high correlation between track assignment, race, and class (Oakes 2005; Rubin 2003). Middle class white and Asian students dominate the higher tracks and low-income minorities—such as African Americans and Hispanics—are disproportionately assigned to

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lower tracks. Track assignments are based on factors such as scores on mental-ability tests, achievement tests, and teacher recommendations. Each of these indices correlates highly with social class and race. Jeannie Oakes and colleagues (Oakes 2005; Oakes, Joseph, and Muir 2004), as well as other researchers (Goodlad 2004; Darling-Hammond 1997; Rubin 2003, 2006), have documented how students in the higher tracks have more highly qualified teachers, have more teachers who are certified in the subjects they teach, and are taught higher-level thinking and analytical skills as well as more challenging subject matter than students in lower tracks. The focus in lower-tracked classes is on rote memorization and discrete knowledge and skills. Some informative and recent work describes the ways in which detracking and heterogeneous groups result in high academic achievement for all students and more equitable classrooms (Boaler 2006; Lotan 2006; Rubin 2003, 2006). Elizabeth Cohen and Rachel Lotan’s (Cohen 1994; Cohen and Lotan 1995) pioneering research on creating equity in heterogeneous classrooms indicates that when teachers have the knowledge and skills, they can facilitate learning for students from a range of ability groups by structuring group work that contains students with multiple ability levels. One important condition of these groups is that all students within them must experience equal status and that the learning tasks for each group must include tasks suited to the ability level of each student in the group. Elizabeth Cohen developed some excellent strategies that teachers can use to implement intellectual tasks which allow students with varying ability levels to participate and contribute in an authentic way to the group task or assignment (Cohen 1994). She points out that the contribution by each student in the group must be needed, important, and not contrived.

Standards-Based Reform and Educational Equality The standards-based reforms that have been implemented nationally in the United States and in the United Kingdom—which were designed to increase educational equality—have in some cases resulted in greater inequality for racial-, ethnic-, and linguistic-minority students and have diverted attention from the social-studies and citizenship education (Sleeter 2007; Tomlinson 2007). Math and reading now dominate the curriculum in many schools throughout the United States, leaving little room for the teaching of other subjects. This is especially the case in inner-city schools attended by large numbers of minority and low-income students (Dillon 2006). Many of the standards-based reforms were created to satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which was led by President George W. Bush and enacted by Congress in 2001. However, many states had initiated standards-based reforms prior to the passage of NCLB. The stan-

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dards-based reforms have led many teachers to focus more on testing than on teaching; to emphasize lower-level facts that can be easily tested; and to put less emphasis on high-level thinking, literature, the arts, and citizenship education (Darling-Hammond 2007; Meier and Wood 2005; Sleeter 2005, 2007). The teaching of social studies is being increasingly neglected as teachers emphasize math and reading, subjects which must be tested annually in grades four and eight with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in order to comply with NCLB requirements. In 2006, science was added to the list of subjects that are required to be tested annually by NCLB. Teachers are judged by the extent to which the test scores of their students increase between testing periods. If the test scores of their students do not increase significantly between testing periods, teachers are subject to negative sanctions and their schools can be designated “failing schools.” The national focus on creating high academic standards and holding educators accountable for student achievement is having mixed results in American schools. Some researchers and educational leaders view the reforms required by NCLB as promising. A study by Melissa Roderick, Brian Jacob, and Anthony Bryk indicates that performance improved in low-performing schools after the implementation of standards-based reform (2002). Some school leaders in high-minority low-achieving schools have applauded NCLB because it requires school districts and states to disaggregate achievement data by income, race, ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency. These administrators believe that the disaggregation of achievement data has helped to focus attention on the academic-achievement gap between white students and students of color, such as African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. NCLB and related reforms have evoked a chorus of criticism from other researchers and school reformers (Noddings 2007; Meier and Wood 2005). The critics of the act argue that standards-based reforms driven by NCLB have had many negative consequences on the curriculum and school life. The reforms have de-skilled and de-professionalized teachers (Giroux 1988); eliminated a balanced curriculum; and diverted attention from the humanities, history, and the social studies. Audrey Amrein and David Berliner (2002) analyzed eighteen states to determine how high-stakes tests affected student learning. They concluded that, in all but one of their analyses, student learning was indeterminate, remained at the same level before high-stakes testing was implemented, or went down when high-stakes testing policies were initiated.

School Segregation and Citizenship Education The increasing racial and ethnic segregation in American schools is having adverse effects on the ability of schools to enhance equal educational oppor-

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tunity and to implement transformative citizenship education (Frankenberg, Lee, and Orfield 2006; Orfield and Eaton 1996). Students in predominantly low-income minority schools have fewer resources, fewer teachers who are certified in the subjects they teach, and fewer courses that are required for admission to the most selective colleges and universities compared to predominantly middle class white schools (Darling-Hammond 2004; Oakes, Joseph, and Muir 2004). Teaching in predominantly low-income minority schools frequently focuses on the development of low-level basic skills rather than on higher-level thinking, decision making, and action. Desegregation in American schools increased from the 1950s to the 1980s. Since the 1980s, school desegregation has been increasingly dismantled, and segregation has increased. Schools in the South are the most desegregated in the nation. However, because of the decisions of conservative courts and various demographic factors, desegregation in the South is receding more rapidly than in any other region in the nation (Frankenberg, Lee, and Orfield 2006). An informative study of the resegregation of American schools found the following: • Whites are the most segregated group in the nation’s public schools; they attend schools, on average, where 80% of the student body is white. . . . Whites attending private schools are even more segregated than their public school counterparts. • Our schools are becoming steadily more nonwhite, as the minority student enrollment approaches 40% of all U.S. public school students, nearly twice the share of minority school students during the 1960s. • The most dramatic growth is seen in the increase of Latino and Asian students. Latino students are the most segregated minority group, with steadily rising segregation both by race and poverty, and a pattern of linguistic segregation is also developing. Latinos have by far the largest dropout rates (Frankenberg, Lee, and Orfield 2006, 1). The resegregation of American schools makes it difficult for teachers to implement transformative citizenship education because social class and racial segregation contradict some of the central tenets of American democracy, such as equality, inclusion, recognition, and social justice (Gutmann 2004). Racial and social-class segregation also make it difficult for teachers to design teaching strategies and interventions consistent with Gordon Allport’s theory of contact (1954). In segregated schools, teachers must use strategies such as vicarious contact and simulations, such as the blue-eyesbrown-eyes role play that the teacher Jane Elliot made famous in the film, The Eye of the Storm (Peters 1987; Byrnes and Kiger 1990). One day in her fifth grade class, Jane Elliot discriminated against the blue-eyed children; the

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next day, she discriminated against the brown-eyed children. The experience had a lifelong impact on the students (which they describe as adults in another film that features Jane Elliot, A Class Divided [Peters 1987]). The Supreme Court ruling on June 28, 2007, limited the options that school districts can use to racially desegregate their schools. The Court ruled that school desegregation plans in the Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, school districts were unconstitutional. Ironically, this decision was issued when there was powerful social-science evidence about the benefits of racially desegregated schools and the negative effects of racial segregation (Joint Statement 2007). In a report on the subject, the National Academy of Education stated, In summary, the research evidence supports the conclusion that the overall academic and social benefits of increased racial diversity are likely to be positive. Racial diversity per se does not guarantee such positive outcomes, but it provides the necessary conditions under which other educational policies can facilitate improved academic achievement, improved intergroup relations, and positive long-range outcomes. Because race-neutral alternatives—such as school choice and assignments based on socieconomic status—are quite limited in their ability to increase racial diversity, it is reasonable to conclude that race-conscious policies for assigning students to schools are the most effective means of achieving racial diversity and its attendant positive outcomes. (National Academy of Education 2007)

Reforming Schools to Actualize Transformative Citizenship Education To create democratic classrooms and to implement transformative citizenship education, teachers must help students to develop the knowledge and skills needed to participate effectively within their cultural, national, regional, and world communities. They must also help students to develop democratic racial and ethnic attitudes. I will provide brief summaries of some of the empirical research from which educators can derive guidelines for changing schools and classrooms to enable students to attain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to be thoughtful and active citizens in multicultural nations and societies.

Closing the Achievement Gap by Using Culturally Responsive Teaching To implement transformative citizenship education, schools must help all students, including ethnic and language minority students, to acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed for productive employment in a highly

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technological and global society, participate effectively in the political system, and take action to increase equity in society. Schools need to work to close the wide achievement gap that exists between middle class white students, as well as some groups of Asian American students, and other students such as African Americans and Mexican Americans. Some of the research and theory that is grounded in the cultural difference paradigm and culturally responsive teaching (also called culturally relevant teaching) indicates that if teachers incorporate the cultures and languages of diverse groups into instruction, the academic achievement of these students will increase (Au 1982; Lee 1995, 2007). Cultural difference theorists believe that groups such as African Americans, Mexican Americans, and American Indians have strong, rich, and diverse cultures (Boykin and Allen 2004; Delpit and Dowdy 2002; LadsonBillings 1994; Moll and González 2004). These cultures, they argue, consist of languages, values, behavioral styles, and perspectives that can enrich the lives of all Americans, including white Americans. They contend that ethnicminority and low-income students fail to achieve in school not because they have deprived cultures, but because their cultures are different from and conflict with the school culture. Cultural difference theorists believe that the school must change in ways that will allow it to respect and reflect the cultures of students from diverse groups and use teaching strategies that are consistent with their cultural characteristics. The schools frequently fail to help students of color and low-income students achieve because they ignore or try to alienate these students from their home and community cultures and languages. Cultural difference theorists frequently cite research that shows how the cultures of the school and of ethnic-minority and low-income youth differ in values, behaviors, dialects, and languages (Gay 2000; Heath 1983; Moll and González 2004). The cultural difference paradigm is a critical response to the notion that ethnic-minority students have cultural deficits (Banks 1986). It is also a challenge to cultural deficit thinking, which contends that students of color and low-income students lack culture, and that the solution is to expose these students to the mainstream American culture in order for them to thrive in school and society. Proponents of cultural difference are critical of the value assumptions underlying such deficit thinking and argue that understanding cultural conflicts rather than deficits is the key to explaining underachievement (Baratz and Baratz 1970; Delpit 1995; Gay 2000; Ladson-Billings 1994). Cultural difference theorists believe that the challenge for the school is to find ways to draw upon the rich cultural strengths of all students and to make use of them in instruction. James A. Banks (2004c) calls this approach to teaching equity pedagogy. It is also known in the literature as culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings 1994) and culturally responsive teaching (Gay 2000). Cultural difference theorists have described the ways in which the lan-

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guages (Heath 1983; Lee 1995; Valdés 2001), dialects (Delpit and Dowdy 2002; Smitherman 2000), and home cultures (Moll and González 2004) of low-income students and students of color can be used to motivate them to learn and to enrich instruction for them and other students. Researchers have produced a significant body of research that describes the differences between the school culture and the home cultures of students of color and language-minority students (Banks and Banks 2004). Studies by Vera John (1972) and Shirley Heath (1982) are examples of these types of studies: Vera John describes the ways in which verbal interactions differ in the school and in the homes of Navajo students. Shirley Heath explains how language use differs among white middle class teachers, the white working class, and the black working class. Some studies provide empirical support for the premise that when teachers use culturally responsive pedagogy, the academic achievement of minority students increases. Kathryn Au found that if teachers used participation structures in lessons that were similar to the Hawaiian speech event “talk story,” the reading achievement of Native Hawaiian students increased significantly (1982). Carol Lee’s research indicates that the achievement of African American students increases when they are taught literary interpretations with lessons that use the African American practice of signifying (Lee 1995, 2007). Luis Moll and colleagues found that when teachers gain an understanding of the “funds of knowledge” of Mexican American households and community networks—and incorporate this knowledge into their teaching—Mexican American students become more active and engaged learners (Moll et al. 1992). A study by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) indicates that the ability to scaffold student learning by bridging home and community cultures is one of the important characteristics of effective teachers of African American students.

Research on Curriculum Materials and Interventions Gordon Allport theorized that contact between different groups would improve intergroup relations if the contact between these groups has the following characteristics: the individuals experience equal status, they share common goals, intergroup cooperation exists, and the contact is sanctioned by authorities such as teachers and administrators, or by law or custom (1954; Pettigrew 2004). One of the ways to increase equal status within classrooms is to use textbooks and other materials that describe the histories, problems, and experiences of diverse groups (Banks 2007; Takaki 1993). Multicultural textbooks and other materials give voice to the histories and experiences of all of the students in the class and do not make any of them feel excluded, marginalized, or silenced (Banks 2003; Cohen 1994).

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Since the 1940s, a number of curriculum interventions studies have been conducted to determine the effects of teaching units and lessons, multicultural textbooks and materials, role-playing, and other kinds of simulated experiences on the racial attitudes and perceptions of students. This research indicates that the use of multicultural textbooks, other teaching materials, and cooperative teaching strategies that enable students from different racial and ethnic groups to interact positively can help students to develop positive racial attitudes. These kinds of materials and teaching strategies can also result in students choosing more friends from outside racial, ethnic, and cultural groups (Slavin 2001). These studies provide guidelines that can help teachers to improve intergroup relations in their classrooms and schools. One of the earliest curriculum studies was conducted by Helen Trager and Marian Yarrow, who examined the effects of a democratic multicultural curriculum on the racial attitudes of children in the first and second grades (1952). The curriculum had a positive effect on the attitudes of both the students and teachers. The authors titled their book They Learn What They Live to highlight its major finding: if students experience democracy, they will internalize it. Research indicates that curriculum interventions such as multiethnic readers (Litcher and Johnson 1969); multicultural television programs (Bogatz and Ball 1971), simulations (Weiner and Wright 1973); multicultural socialstudies materials (Yawkey and Blackwell 1974); folk dances, music, crafts, and role-playing (Ijaz and Ijaz 1981); plays (Gimmestad and DeChiara 1982); discussions about race (Aboud and Doyle 1996); and discussions combined with antiracist teaching (McGregor 1993) can have positive effects on the racial attitudes of students. Long-term interracial contact had a positive influence on the racial attitudes of adults in a study conducted by Peter Wood and Nancy Sonleitner (1996).

Research on Cooperative Learning and Interracial Contact Most researchers who have conducted studies in schools of the effects of cooperative learning and interracial contact have used Gordon Allport’s (1954) contact theory to conceptualize their studies. Since 1970, a group of investigators, guided by this theory, have produced a rich body of cumulative research on the effects of cooperative learning groups and activities on students’ racial attitudes, friendship choices, and achievement (Aronson 2002; Aronson and Bridgeman 1979; Aronson and González 1988; Cohen 1972, 1984; Cohen and Lotan 1995; Cohen and Roper 1972; Johnson and Johnson 1981, 1994; Slavin 1979, 1983, 1985; Slavin and Madden 1979; for a review of this research, see Schofield 2004). Most of this research has been conducted using elementary and high school students (Slavin 1983, 1985).

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This research strongly supports the notion that cooperative interracial contact situations in schools—if the conditions stated by Gordon Allport are present in the contact situations—have positive effects on both student interracial behavior and student academic achievement (Aronson and González 1988; Slavin 1979, 1983). In his review of nineteen studies of the effects of cooperative-learning methods, Robert Slavin (1985) found that sixteen of the studies had positive effects on interracial friendships. In another review, Robert Slavin (2001) also describes the positive effects of cooperative groups on cross-racial friendships, racial attitudes, and behavior. Investigators have also found that cooperative-learning activities have increased student motivation and self-esteem (Slavin 1985), and have helped students to develop empathy (Aronson 2002; Aronson and Bridgeman 1979). The research by Elizabeth Cohen and Susan Roper (1972) indicates that equal status between groups in interracial situations has to be deliberately structured by teachers or it will not exist. If students from different racial, ethnic, and language groups are mixed in contact situations without structured interventions that create equal-status conditions, racial and ethnic conflict and stereotyping is likely to increase. Students from both privileged and marginalized groups are likely to respond in ways that will reinforce the status of the higher-status group. In a series of perceptive and carefully designed studies, Elizabeth Cohen and her colleagues have consistently found that contact among different groups without deliberate interventions to increase equalstatus and positive interactions among them will increase, rather than reduce, intergroup tensions (Cohen 1984; Cohen and Roper 1972; Cohen and Lotan 1995).

Creating Crosscutting Superordinate Groups Whenever in-groups and out-groups form, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination develop. Consequently, it becomes necessary for educators to design and implement strategies to improve intergroup relations. Social psychological theory and research, known as the minimal group paradigm, indicates that when mere categorization develops, individuals favor the ingroup over the out-group and they discriminate against the outgroup (Rothbart and John 1993; Smith and Mackie 1995). This can occur in situations without prior historical conflict, animosity, competition, physical differences, or any kind of important difference. Henri Tajfel wrote, “Whenever we are confronted with a situation to which some form of intergroup categorization appears directly relevant, we are likely to act in a manner that discriminates against the outgroup and favors the ingroup” (1970, 98). In a series of studies, Henri Tajfel and Michael Billig (Tajfel 1970; Billig and Tajfel 1973) produced considerable evidence to support the postulate that individuals are likely to evaluate the in-group more favorably than the out-

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group and to treat the ingroup more favorably even when the differences between the groups are minimal, contrived, and insignificant. This series of studies indicates the power of categorization. In one group of experiments, researchers told a group of public school boys in Bristol (United Kingdom) that he had divided them into two groups based on whether they had underor overestimated the number of dots projected on a screen (Tajfel 1970). The subjects were then given a series of tasks in which they could provide rewards to two anonymous students. When the students gave rewards to in-group members, they divided them equally. However, they favored the in-group when one student was an out-group member and the other an in-group member. The experimenter contrived the groups. The assignment of the groups was random and was not based on the estimation of the dots by the subjects. The minimum group paradigm, also known as social identity theory, is in some ways more helpful in explaining the development of in-group–outgroup boundaries than in suggesting practices to reduce them. One implication of social identity theory is that to increase positive intergroup contact, the salience of group characteristics should be minimized and a superordinate group to which students from different cultural and language groups can become identified should be constructed. In a classroom characterized by language diversity, group salience is likely to be reduced to the extent that all students become competent in the same languages. For example, in a classroom with both Anglo Americans and Mexican Americans, group salience is increased if only the Mexican American students speak Spanish. However, if both groups become competent in both English and Spanish, bilingual competency can be the basis for the formation of a superordinate group to which all of the students belong (Lambert and Cazabon 1994). Research indicates that creating or making salient superordinate and crosscutting group memberships improves intergroup relations (Banks et al. 2001; Stephan 1999). James A. Banks and colleagues write, “When membership in superordinate groups is salient, other group differences become less important. Creating superordinate groups stimulates cohesion, which can mitigate pre-existing animosities” (Banks et al. 2001, 9). Members of a sports team, Future Farmers of America, Girl Scouts, or Campfire are examples of crosscutting or superordinate groups. Research and theory indicate that when students from diverse cultural, racial, and linguistic groups share a superordinate identity such as Girl Scouts, cultural boundaries weaken. Students are consequently able to form friendships and to have positive interactions and relationships with students from different racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups. Extra- and cocurricular activities—such as the drama club, the debating club, the basketball team, and the school chorus—create rich opportunities for structuring superordinate groups and crosscutting group memberships (Stephan 1999; Stephan and Stephan 2004). When teachers create crosscutting or superordinate groups, they should

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make sure that the integrity of different cultures represented in the classroom is respected and given legitimacy within the framework of the superordinate group that is created. Superordinate groups that only reflect the norms and values of dominant and powerful groups within the school are not likely to improve intergroup relations among different groups in the school. If they are not carefully structured and monitored, crosscutting groups can reproduce the dominant power relationships that exist within the school and the larger society.

School Reform and Transformative Citizenship Education A holistic paradigm that conceptualizes the school as an interrelated whole is needed to guide educational reform to actualize transformative citizenship (Banks 2004c). This can be seen in figure 8.1. Viewing the school as a social system enables us to conceptualize school reform that will enable minority students to increase their academic achievement and help all students to develop democratic attitudes and values. Research and theory indicate that educators can successfully intervene to help students to increase their academic achievement (Darling-Hammond 1997) and to develop democratic attitudes and values (Stephan and Stephan 2004; Stephan and Vogt 2004). Conceptualizing the school as a social system suggests that we must formulate and initiate a change strategy that reforms the total school environment in order to implement transformative citizenship education. Reforming any one variable, such as curriculum materials and the formal curriculum, is necessary but not sufficient. Multicultural and sensitive teaching materials are ineffective in the hands of teachers who have negative attitudes toward different racial, cultural, and linguistic groups. Such teachers are likely to use multicultural materials rarely or to use them in a detrimental way. Thus, helping teachers and other members of the school staff to develop democratic attitudes and values is essential when implementing transformative citizenship education programs and experiences.

The School as a Cultural System When formulating plans for citizenship education, educators should conceptualize the school as a microculture that has norms, values, roles, and goals like other cultural systems. The school has a dominant culture and a variety of subcultures. Almost all classrooms in Western societies are multicultural because mainstream students, as well as minority students, are socialized within diverse cultures. Teachers in Western societies also come from many different racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural groups. Many teachers were socialized in cultures other than the mainstream cultures of their societies, al-

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Figure 8.1

Transformative Citizenship Education

The school staff has democratic attitudes and values (nonracist).

Language pluralism and diversity are valued and fostered in the school.

The school has norms and values that reflect and legitimize ethnic and cultural diversity.

Teaching and motivational styles are used that are effective with students from different social class, racial, and ethnic groups.

Assessment and testing procedures promote social class and ethnic equality.

Students from different ethnic, cultural, and social class groups experience equal status within the school.

The curriculum and teaching materials present diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives on concepts, issues, and problems.

Teachers and students acquire the skills and perspectives needed to recognize various forms of racism and take action to eliminate them.

TRANSFORMATIVE CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

Source: Author’s compilation. Note: The total school environment is conceptualized as a system that consists of a number of identifiable variables, such as staff attitudes and values, assessment and testing procedures, and curriculum and teaching materials. In the reformed school that promotes transformative citizenship education, each of these variables has been changed and reflects ethnic, cultural, language, and social-class equity.

though these cultures may be forgotten and repressed (Diakiw 1994). The school is a microculture where the cultures of students and teachers meet. The school should be a cultural environment where acculturation takes place: both teachers and students should incorporate some of the views, perceptions, and ethos of each other as they interact (see figure 8.2). This process will enrich both teachers and students, and the academic achievement of stu-

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dents from diverse cultures will be enhanced as their cosmos and ethos are reflected and legitimized in the school. This process will enable students to experience what Amy Gutmann calls recognition (2004). Incorporating some of the perspectives of students from diverse groups into school subjects will enrich the mainstream curriculum for all students as well as the perspectives and ethos of teachers. By including some of the values, beliefs, and perspectives of minority groups into their teaching and into school knowledge, teachers will be better able to implement transformative citizenship education, promote equality and social justice, and enrich their personal lives. Richard Shweder describes the ways in which diverse perspectives expand our vision of society and the world. The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular. Per this maxim, one should stay on the move, seeking out and engaging alternative points of view. (2003, 2)

Historically, the school curricula in the United States as well as in other nations have taught only the mainstream view of the nation and the world, and the goal has been assimilation rather than acculturation (Banks 2004a; Cubberley 1909; Graham 2005). The students were expected to acquire the dominant culture of the school and society, but the school neither legitimized nor incorporated parts of the students’ own cultures. Assimilation and acculturation are different in important ways: Assimilation involves the complete elimination of cultural differences and differentiating group identification. When acculturation occurs, a culture is modified through contact with one or more other cultures but maintains its essence (Theodorson and Theodorson 1969). Both acculturation and accommodation should take place in today’s schools in Western democratic societies. When accommodation occurs, groups with diverse cultures maintain their separate identities but live in peaceful interaction. It is essential that schools in Western democracies acculturate students rather than promote complete assimilation. This is because students need the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required to become successful citizens in their cultural communities as well as within nations, regions, and the world. The price of success in school and the civic culture should not be alienation from self, family, and community (Wong Fillmore 2005). If they are to function successfully in their nation-states, all students must develop competency in the national language or languages and acquire the skills needed to participate in the national civic culture. They must also develop a commitment to the overarching democratic ideals of their nation-states, such as equality and justice (Calhoun 2007). Acquiring

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Language and dialect Nonverbal communications Perspectives and worldviews Behavior styles and nuances Methods of reasoning and validating knowledge Cultural identification

Language and dialect Nonverbal communications Perspectives and worldviews Behavior styles and nuances Methods of reasoning and validating knowledge Cultural identification

The school culture reflects the values, perspectives, and behaviors of the students and the teachers.

THE SCHOOL CULTURE

Source: Author’s compilation. Note: When the student incorporates elements of the teacher’s culture and the teacher incorporates elements of the student’s culture, the school becomes a synthesized cultural system that reflects the cultures of all its participants.

THE TEACHER’S CULTURE

Acculturation as a School Goal

THE STUDENT’S CULTURE

Figure 8.2

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the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to participate in their nationstates, region, and in the global community means that all students, including majority-group students, will need to acquire cultural components that are not a part of their home and community culture. However, ethnicminority students can acquire essential aspects of the mainstream culture without surrendering the most important aspects of their first culture or becoming alienated from it. People are quite capable of being bicultural and bilingual. To implement transformative citizenship education, the school must help students to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively in their community culture, in the mainstream national culture, and within and between other ethnic cultures and subsocieties. The school should not require students to become alienated from their families and communities in order to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in the national, regional, and global communities. In an extemporaneous speech to a group of teachers in New York City in 1963, James Baldwin described the kind of thoughtful and active citizens we need to educate for the global community in which we live and the dire consequences of not doing so: The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What society really, ideally, wants is a citizenry that will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. (Baldwin 1985, 326)

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9 AFTER JUST SCHOOLS: THE EQUALITYDIFFERENCE PARADOX AND CONFLICTING VARIETIES OF LIBERAL HOPE Richard A. Shweder Difference: “No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home as he crosses the school threshold, nor to live and act as though school and home represent two totally separate and different cultures which have to be kept firmly apart.” (Bullock 1975) Equality: “A French Minister once boasted that in any hour of any day, he knew exactly what every schoolchild in France was studying. It is hard to imagine anything more alien to the tradition of education in the United States.” (Galston 2005, 78)

S

everal conflicting varieties of liberal value are present in debates about how children should be justly educated in a multicultural society such as our own. Specifically, there are four liberal values—autonomy, merit-based justice, equal opportunity, and benevolent safekeeping of the vulnerable—that are aspects of the liberal political ideal of equal regard for all citizens. These four values have changed in different ways throughout public policy debates about the equality-difference paradox and the appropriate place for multiculturalism in American schools. The idea of an equalitydifference paradox refers to the tension or tradeoff between public policies supporting genuine cultural diversity in beliefs, values, and family life practices, versus public policies promoting equal educational outcomes for all children regardless of cultural or family background. Essential in understanding this tension is the distinction between pluralism and inclusion as educational objectives. I want to note that the history of this book is inseparable from the history of the Russell Sage Foundation and Social Science Research Council Working Group on “Law and Culture” (previous named the Working Group on

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“Ethnic Customs, Assimilation and American Law”). This has been an interdisciplinary forum for legal scholars, lawyers, political theorists, and social scientists to examine the challenge of multiculturalism in liberal democracies. In 2002 the Working Group published a book titled Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies (Shweder, Minow, and Markus 2002). After several years of rich conversations and debates among the many social scientists, legal scholars, and lawyers in the Working Group, all of whom had an interest in contemporary patterns of social and cultural diversity, one of the main lessons learned was that models of equality in public policy debates are diverse and not necessarily mutually compatible; yet those models of equality stand in need of explication for the sake of both promoting equality and giving permission to diversity in those societies. Just Schools builds on the experience of the members of the Working Group and focuses the discussion of multiculturalism on the challenges facing schools. The coeditors of this book were encouraged by the members of the Working Group to design and organize a narrowly focused project in order to make deeper sense of the persistent and recurring evidence of competing models and polarizing views of equality in public policy debates about the aims of education. Thus this chapter is inspired not only by James Madison’s specific concern about factions, but also by the general concern, shared by all the contributors to this edited volume, to identify and distinguish between two types of multicultural agendas—the pluralism agenda and the inclusion agenda—and to raise questions about their degree of compatibility. In a genuinely liberal democratic society, the most popular political ideals tend to be variations on the notion of equal regard for all citizens (or, alternatively and more expansively, equal regard for all “persons”). Taken together they express collective hopes for the development of that type of goodness (equal regard) in that kind of society (a liberal democratic one). The four particular values of autonomy, merit-based justice, equal opportunity, and benevolent safekeeping of the vulnerable—all of which add substance to the abstract ethical ideal of equal regard—are so commonplace and fundamental in a society such as the United States that they are readily recognized and intuitively embraced with a sense of approbation, hope, and expectancy. They serve to motivate action, justify public policy objectives, and define the moral foundations of social and political life.1 Yet these values are not necessarily mutually compatible or in harmony with each other. Irresolvable conflicts—for example, between merit-based justice (a value whose implementation typically results in an unequal distribution of rewards) and equal opportunity (a value whose implementation typically requires a redistribution of resources), or between autonomy (a value whose implementation typically calls for a liberty-based hands-off policy) and benevolent safekeeping of the vulnerable (a value whose imple-

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mentation typically calls for external controls and hands-on interventions)— are often the source of schoolyard fights over public policy issues with regard to education. It is largely because of such value conflicts that we have national debates about affirmative action; about public versus private education; about the proper degree of uniformity versus diversity of educational standards and curricula; about whether the best way to prepare children for life in a multicultural and pluralistic society is to mirror or replicate our national demographic diversity within every classroom (for example, through the ethnic, racial, and gender balancing of public schools)—the civic republican ideal)—or alternatively by providing parents and students the option to enter a supportive (“identity-safe”) environment (for example, a private or charter school) in which “birds of a feather flock together”—the liberal pluralist ideal. We have debates about the significance of (and proposed remedies for) ethnic or racial inequalities in academic achievement or in the acquisition of socially valued skills; about public support for private school vouchers; and about federal versus state versus local versus home control over the moral ideals (for example, sexual restraint versus sexual liberation) and views of the world (for example, Darwinism versus intelligent design) that are taught to children. Nevertheless, in some significant measure, it is the very variety of our conceptions of the meaning of equal regard for all citizens, and the inherent tensions amongst them, that allows for creative innovation, experimentation, and institutional diversity in the character of America’s schools. This chapter then is best read as a schematic attempt by an anthropological observer of the American value scene and of public policy debates about educational reform to provide a very preliminary outline or framework for thinking about the character of contemporary “multicultural” or “diversity” agendas with regard to schooling in the United States. It is inspired, in part, by James Madison’s famous treatise concerning factions in American society (in Federalist 10, originally published on November 22, 1787, in the Daily Advertiser). This treatise describes a faction as a subgroup of citizens, whether in the majority or in the minority, who are bound to each other by some shared interests, values, opinions, passions, or historical identity that sets them in contrast to the interests, values, opinions, passions, or historical identity of some other subgroup of citizens. If twenty-five hundred years of human reflection on the experience of living in groups has taught us anything, it is that factions and hierarchies (differences and inequalities) are unavoidable features of social life; it is unwise for a ruler, government, or people to try to coercively engineer a society so as to mold all individuals into a uniform, and hence equal, shape. In this regard, Madison’s observations about the connection between subgroup diversity (factions) and the value of liberty or autonomy are particularly instructive for debates about multiculturalism in American society:

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There are two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves (Madison 1787/1961, 72–73).

James Madison’s observations about diversity seem especially apt as our liberal democracy stands poised at the start of yet another round of difficult yet unavoidable debates about multiculturalism and group differences with regard to education (including, but not restricted to, group differences related to the achievement gap in reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as scholastic success more generally). The title of the book is Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference. A common (and hence equal or just, because identical) curriculum is relatively easy to devise in an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society. The United States, however, is not an ethnically or culturally homogeneous society. Thus just education in the United States means that all youth—regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, family background, or group affiliation— must be provided with the essential knowledge, values, and skills for successful adult participation in a multicultural society. That is to say, a society that is prepared to remain culturally diverse and to leave moral, legal, and social space for groups of various sizes and sorts to preserve their distinctive ways of life (including distinctive beliefs about nature, persons, society, the good life, and even valued skills). The idea of a just school system for the United States, however, is not just an abstraction; the aims of Just Schools are very concrete. The book is a collection of eight chapters in which legal scholars, educators, and social scientists enter into a national discussion about what educating justly amounts to concretely, from a legal and ethical point of view, in twenty-first century liberal democracies. They do so by looking at the way Americans from diverse religious, ethnic, racial, and social-class backgrounds (for example, Muslim Americans in Bridgeview, Illinois, middle class residents of Amherst, Massachusetts, and Somali refugees in Lewiston, Maine) are creatively trying to make their schools work in societies of difference. Additionally, in chapter 7, John Bowen describes the French concept of citizenship education, long-

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standing European anxieties about “difference” (for example, anxieties concerning the head scarf worn by Muslim girls), and the ideology of equality and secularism in the School of the Republic in France. This serves as a useful point of comparison to the American educational scene. Perhaps that point of comparison is most telling in the contrast between the account of the French head-scarf controversy (Bowen, chapter 7, this volume) and the reactions to the Somali Muslim head scarf in a public high school in Lewiston, Maine (Lindkvist, chapter 6, this volume). The book takes a close look not only at the ways that multicultural issues are addressed and managed at different types of schools (rich and poor, public and private, religious and secular), but also the ways that multicultural issues are viewed by different schools of thought about difference found in American law, American folk psychology, American educational theory, and in liberal political theory. Various chapters critically analyze the potential discord between ideas about difference (or pluralism) and ideas about equality (or inclusion), so as to unpack their many meanings and assess points of compatibility and tension. They address the equality-difference paradox: to what extent is it possible to reconcile the provision of equal educational opportunity to a generation of American children with the freedom of their parents to be culturally and religiously different and to perpetuate their distinctive ways of life by means of education? Just Schools is also about the conflicts and possibilities inherent in the American conception of public responsibility with regard to educational opportunities for all of its children. A conclusion drawn in chapter 2 by the Harvard University legal scholar Martha Minow helps define a major theme of the book. Martha Minow once served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, whose legal career will forever be associated with the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Thurgood Marshall was an advocate for the NAACP in that famous case which overturned the legal authority for state-mandated racially segregated schools and discredited the doctrine of “separate but equal” as applied in public domains in the American South. Assessing the contemporary early twenty-first century American legal scene, Martha Minow writes, “During the more than fifty years since Brown v. Board of Education, integration across race, gender, disability, and religion has declined as either a constitutional requirement or a political commitment, but equal opportunity for each individual has become firmly entrenched, especially in education, as a symbol of community and national commitment” (chapter 2, this volume). She describes how the legal battle against racism and vicious discrimination in the American South has resulted ultimately in the call for equal treatment of all groups (including religious and ethnic groups) in the allocation of public funds for public purposes. This has had the remarkable implications that even the separation or segregation of church from state might one day come to be viewed as a vicious form of discrimina-

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tion against religion, and public policies concerning the provision of equal opportunity specifically tailored to remedy a history of racial grievances might soon become general models for public support for all types of groups, including religious and ethnic groups. In truth, the United States is a complex liberal democracy that is both individualistic and multicultural. It is a nation that has disavowed public mandates concerning the forced separation of groups but has never been terribly thrilled about the mandatory integration of groups either. This is in part because the mandated integration of groups is not necessarily a royal or even secure road to equality, and in part because, outside the realm of public affairs (and perhaps even inside that realm as well), America is a pluralistic and heterogeneous society that remains committed to the recognition and maintenance of community-based differences if they are freely chosen. The recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion rejecting student racial integration plans in Seattle, Washington, and Jefferson County, Virginia (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 2007), recounts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education this way: “In Brown v. Board of Education . . . we held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because government classification and separation on grounds of race themselves denoted inferiority. . . . It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954.”2 But the Court majority went on to say that “the distinction between segregation by state action and racial imbalance [for example, in schools, neighborhoods, occupations, et cetera] caused by other factors [for example, private choices] has been central to our jurisprudence in this area for generations.” Furthermore, the majority said that, “Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify imposing racial proportionality throughout American Society, contrary to the Court’s repeated admonitions that this is unconstitutional.” Justice Clarence Thomas put it this way in his concurring opinion: “[De facto] Racial imbalance [per se] is not segregation.” Thus, one must ask, given the current legacy of Brown v. Board of Education in our contemporary high-immigration globalizing multicultural society, what does educating justly actually amount to? Is it possible to be in favor of pluralism and inclusion at the same time? Can difference and equality coexist? If not, then why not? If yes, then how? Is equality attainable without integration? Is cultural difference sustainable without separation? Are there benign forms of “separate but equal,” in which citizens end up living fulfilling lives precisely because they have chosen to live in a relatively homogeneous community or to go to a school where “birds of a feather flock together”? We live in interesting and changing times, which is one reason that this

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book is full of surprises. In the light of both Martha Minow’s observations about equal treatment for all groups (and the associated observation that racial balancing or the mandated integration of members of all groups is not the same as equality) and James Madison’s observations about the inevitability of factions, the various chapters in Just Schools might well be viewed as preliminary explorations charting the rapidly evolving scope and limits of equal educational opportunity in a multicultural United States. We live in a time when the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education is undergoing revision, and the racial justice templates of the 1950s and 1960s are being both extended and transformed. This is the right time to rethink what we mean by “just schools” and to do so in the light of new experiences with diversity.

The Problem of Multiculturalism One of the central concerns of Just Schools is to come to terms with the term multiculturalism so as to clarify the meaning of equal educational opportunity in the United States today. Perhaps it is not so surprising that the word multiculturalism is now widely viewed with suspicion, even among its proponents. The word has become a slogan for so many (perhaps for too many) rather different and even contradictory sorts of educational and social movements and public policy agendas. There are multiculturalists who value group differences and want to preserve them. There are other multiculturalists who think group differences are the product of vicious discrimination; within any truly just society, group differences should be made to go away (see Markus, chapter 3, this volume, for the distinction drawn between “culturally derived differences” and “statusimposed differences”). There are multiculturalists who think that the word multiculturalism means being a hybrid and actively promoting the erosion of borders or boundaries between groups as well as the mixing up or integrating of things (in marriages, neighborhoods, schools, and even cuisines). There are other multiculturalists who think the word implies autonomy, in-group solidarity, the power to remain separate or pure, and the capacity to maintain boundaries or restore a distinctive way of life (by means of marriage, neighborhoods, schools, and even by means of a defining or indigenous cuisine). There are multiculturalists who use the word in an almost ironic sense to commend and promote the mainstreaming, assimilation, or inclusion of people of different colors or ancestries into the society and shared subculture of the American elite; and there are other multiculturalists who use the term to call on the mainstream elite to accommodate themselves to minority-group differences in customs, values, and beliefs, and to tolerate or even celebrate genuine cultural diversity. There are multiculturalists who are distressed by, and deeply suspicious of, the idea that members of different groups might differ from each other in

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typifying ways; they disparage all claims about group differences as stereotyping. For other multiculturalists, the very concept of multiculturalism would have no point at all if it were not for the reality of real differences between individuals that arise by virtue of their membership in different and particular groups. Those multiculturalists are very suspicious of all forms of what they disparage as “everybody-loves-Saturday-night” shallow humanism. The goal of Just Schools is to put pressure on both the advocates and critics of multiculturalism, especially those concerned with the aims of education in a real multicultural society: the United States today—not in 1954 or 1964, but in the new immigration era of the past forty years. In effect, the chapters of the book call on all of us to set aside the slogan (or the epithet) of multiculturalism, and to have a closer look at the way Americans are trying to make their schools work in societies of difference. They call on all of us to enter the national discussion about what educating justly ought to mean in a country committed not only to equal opportunity but also to the freedom of individuals and groups to be different.

Societies of Difference: The Multiplicity of Cultural Groups The word multicultural is not necessarily problematic or particularly ambiguous. Descriptively, the term simply points to the undeniable fact that populations tend to subdivide into factions, groups, or communities whose cherished beliefs and values are not consistent with one another and whose folkways or routine family life and social practices are substantially different—different enough to be noticed by members of other factions, groups, or communities. This process of subdivision takes place on a global scale where the existence of “global multiculturalism” (the divergent evolution and preferential perpetuation of distinctive cherished beliefs, values and folkways in places such as India, China, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, or Norway) is both a fact of life and the main reason for the existence of regional area studies programs at leading research institutions around the world. Subdivision can also take place within particular nation states, resulting in “domestic multiculturalism.” As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz remarked, “Positioning Muslims in France, Whites in South Africa, Arabs in Israel, or Koreans in Japan are not altogether the same sort of thing. But if political theory is going to be of any relevance at all in the splintered world, it will have to have something cogent to say about how, in the face of a drive towards a destructive integrity, such structures can be brought into being, how they can be sustained, and how they can be made to work” (2000). And of course, we are not talking here just of Muslims in France or Koreans in Japan, but also of Bangladeshis in Saudi

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Arabia, Gambians in Norway, Guatemalans in Mexico, and Mexicans in the United States. And, of course, this news is not necessarily new. Viewed descriptively or anthropologically, as a matter of fact, the United States has always been a multicultural society. Long before the European founding of a new nation in the eighteenth century, long before the European settlement of New England in the seventeenth century, and long before European exploration of the Western hemisphere in the fifteenth century, culturally diverse “native” American ethnic groups (including the Navaho, Apache, Wampanoag, and Shoshone) were the relevant local factions. Their many differences and conflicts have been richly described in a vast anthropological literature (Handbook of North American Indians). Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, after the creation of European settlements and the founding of a new nation, other relevant communities and factions emerged. In particular, the culturally diverse Protestant sects (Puritan, Anabaptist, Anglican, Quaker, and so forth) and the semiautonomous regional subcultures (Massachusetts, Delaware, Virginia, the Backcountry) emerged, whose origins as well as many differences and conflicts have been richly described by the historian David Fischer (1989). The multicultural beat continued with the coercive importation of peoples from quite diverse (and sometimes warring) ethnic groups in Africa as well as the voluntary or forced migration of peoples from different ethnic, religious, and national sites in Europe and Asia. These immigrants included Irish, Polish, and Italian Catholics; Chinese; and Jews of many different nationalities. From a descriptive viewpoint, this land that ultimately came to be known as the United States of America has never been a culturally homogenous country. Its residents have always had to come to terms in some way with the political and educational challenges posed by the undeniable existence of a countrywide population descended from multiple source populations with distinctive historical ancestries and marked by correlated group-based differences in folkways, values, and cherished beliefs.

The Educational Challenge of Domestic Multiculturalism Inevitably certain challenges arise for any single nation-state faced with that type of fact-of-life domestic multiculturalism. Politically, the challenge is to make sure that the subdivisions or cultural factions within the general population are able to coexist with each other within a framework of ordered liberty, avoid destructive conflict, contribute to the general well-being of the nation, and fulfill the common obligations of citizenship. This is a much discussed challenge. James Madison’s Federalist 10 of The Federalist Papers is a classic treatment of this issue: the so-called problem of factions.

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Educationally, the challenge is to make sure that all individual children, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, family background, or group affiliation, are provided with the essential prerequisites for successful adult participation in a multicultural society. With respect to that challenge, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, “The state has the unchallengeable right to prescribe minimum requirements for future citizenship and beyond that to further and support the teaching of subjects and professions which are felt to be desirable and necessary to the nation as a whole” (1958). What are the essential prerequisites for successful participation in a multicultural society such as our own? Who decides on and controls the proper balance between universal reason versus community-based revelations and local cultural commitments in the cultivation and transmission of knowledge, skills, and values from generation to generation? Beyond supporting the teaching of subjects and occupations thought to be of value to the nation as a whole, to what extent is it the role of the state to make decisions about the particular place in a multicultural society where individuals from different groups will try to successfully participate? In a genuinely multicultural society, what are the educational interests of the child, the parents, and the state? Are those interests in harmony with each other or in conflict? When conflicts arise between the interests of parents and the interests of the state, or between the interests of parents and the interests of children (or conceivably even between the interests of children versus the interests of the state), whose interests should take precedence in the control of educational exposure and educational outcomes?

Schoolyard Fights: Pluralism and Inclusion in American Education It is the goal of the multicultural pluralism agenda to make it possible for groups or factions (for example, Native Americans, Amish Mennonites living in Wisconsin, Hasidic Jews living in New York, Sunni Muslims living in the suburbs of Chicago, Christian Fundamentalists living in Tennessee, Cuban Santeria living in Florida, or secular humanists living in Amherst, Massachusetts, or Mexican American Catholics living in the Southwest) to sustain and perpetuate their cultural or religious differences, their diverse ways of life, and their distinct communal identities. In contrast, it is the goal of the multicultural inclusion agenda to make it possible for individual members of all minority groups and factions to attain “mainstream” educational, socioeconomic, occupational, and political status. The goal is to eliminate groupbased inequalities in cultural capital, or community-based knowledge, values, passions, or interests. Hence the multicultural inclusion agenda calls for the “mainstreaming” of many aspects of minority-group culture, from ways of speaking to residential, marriage, and occupational choices. According to

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the multicultural inclusion agenda, diverse groups should be recognized, but this is primarily for the sake of equalizing them by making all groups (viewed as aggregates) more or less the same. (This appears to be one feature that distinguishes “soft multiculturalists” from “hard multiculturalists” in Austin Sarat’s account of the multiculturalism in the Amherst School system in chapter 4 of this volume). Are these two multicultural agendas compatible with each other? If so, what are the most effective ways to promote communal difference and communal equality at the same time? For example, if you are a minority faction, to what extent is the preservation of communal difference, and perhaps even the ultimate attainment of communal equality, enhanced by keeping some distance from the majority faction (as in the case of those Native American groups who seek tribal sovereignty, or as in the case of those genuinely separate-but-equal private schools for Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, or African American youth)? Alternatively, if the multicultural pluralism agenda and the multicultural inclusion agenda are not compatible—perhaps because of a tension between the liberal expectancies of autonomy and expressive liberty versus the other liberal expectancies of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping—what are the tradeoffs between those policies aimed at permitting or promoting group-based differences and those policies aimed at the attainment of equality in social status for the members of all groups? These questions frame this analysis of four varieties of liberal hope and some of the ways that they conflict in debates about how to educate children in America, and how to do so justly.

Four Liberal Expectancies There are probably as many types of liberal ideals as there are ways to give substantive meaning and interpretive character to the abstract concept of equal regard for all persons.3 Within the liberal tradition, the concept of equal regard for all persons amounts to the idea of fostering conditions that make it possible for all persons to realize their potential for rational self-governance. “Persons,” as defined in the liberal tradition, are individuals who are endowed with reason and free will, and thus at least have the capacity to rationally govern themselves. Having equal regard for all persons, viewed as an abstract ideal, amounts to promoting those conditions of society that make it possible for potentially rational and self-governing individuals to develop and pursue their interests, and to do so in cooperation and coordination with others and in the light of some shared conception of a good life. Perhaps because the ultimate aim of a liberal society is the promotion of rational self-governance, the primary focus of attention in the liberal tradition has been on the individual. Nevertheless, rational self-governance is hardly possible unless individuals pursue their interests (however those might be defined) in cooperation and coordination

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with others and in the light of some shared conception (however fallible) of a good life. This is one of the reasons for valuing the formation of factions and subgroups even within a liberal society. The concept of equal regard for all persons in the realization of their capacity for rational self-governance may well be mandatory (and hence partly definitive) of all ideals that deserve to be called “liberal.” However, the concept in and of itself is abstract and relatively devoid of tangible meaning. Fortunately, the concept has lent itself to a limited number of more concrete conceptualizations or substantive interpretations, which are enumerated below. 1.

2.

3.

4.

The liberal expectancy of autonomy, or expressive liberty, interprets equal regard for all persons as equal respect for the freedom of individuals and groups to lead their lives as they see fit. This is a form of regard that the political philosopher William Galston describes as a presumption “against external interference with individual and group endeavors” (2002, 3). The liberal expectancy of merit-based justice, or nondiscrimination, interprets equal regard for all persons as the equal consideration of each person’s relevant remunerative claims. This form of regard might be described as the presumption that individuals and groups should get what they deserve in life and reap what they sow—their “just desert”—on the basis of their objective qualifications and an unbiased and procedurally fair evaluation of what is due to them. The liberal expectancy of equal opportunity interprets equal regard for all persons as the provision of equal life prospects. This might be described as the presumption that, regardless of family background, group history, or genetic endowment, all individuals in a society, starting at the ontogenetic onset of personhood (either at birth or in the womb) should have the same chances in life to acquire or develop the knowledge and skills required to participate in any of the valued positions in a society.4 The liberal expectancy of benevolent safekeeping interprets equal regard for all persons as equal protection against abuse, disastrous misfortune, or acute vulnerability. This makes manifest our sympathy for those who are downtrodden, mistreated, or incapable. Benevolent safekeeping might be described as the presumption that anyone who is disabled, highly vulnerable, or abused deserves protection from physical, mental, and spiritual harms (including harms that may be self-inflicted), out of respect for the ideal of fostering conditions that make it possible for all individual persons to be able to realize their potential for rational self-governance.

All four of these liberal expectancies are quite robust. It is deeply offensive to the liberal spirit when individuals or groups are stigmatized or penalized

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for living the kind of life they want to live, or when they are forced to hide or abandon their personal or cultural identities so as to avoid fines, ridicule, deportation, arrest, or any other type of socially inflicted pain aimed at restricting or eradicating their valued way of life. It is deeply offensive to the liberal spirit when similar cases are treated differently (for example, allowing one adult citizen to vote but not another similarly qualified person); when different cases are treated alike (recall Anatole France’s ironic reference to the majestic equality of French law, which forbade both the rich and the poor from sleeping under the bridges of Paris); or when qualifications are unfairly assessed and merit and accomplishment go unrewarded. It is also deeply offensive to the liberal spirit when an individual’s prospects for access to the good things in life are mainly a matter of a person’s genetic, social, or family inheritance (“there but for fortune go you or I”). And lastly, it is deeply offensive to the liberal spirit when those who are highly vulnerable, disabled, or unfortunate are not protected or assisted by those who are in a position to care for them.5

The Illiberal Side of Any Liberal Expectancy Ethical pipe dreams, however, even liberal ones, have the uncanny potential to become moral nightmares. In this instance, a noteworthy feature of each of the four liberal expectancies is that if any one of those robust ethical principles is embraced in isolation from all the rest, pushed to its extreme, sooner or later we arrive at a point at which the principle no longer seems “liberal,” precisely because it begins to conflict with one or more of the other liberal expectancies. Thereby it cancels one or more of the other necessary conditions for the development of the rational self-governance that, according to the liberal tradition, is the aim or purpose of human agency or personhood. In other words, although the four liberal expectancies clash, they also require one another in order to produce a liberal society; and a society begins the move from being liberal to being illiberal if and when any of the four liberal expectancies is taken to an extreme or is eclipsed by the others. Consider, for example, the liberal expectancy favoring autonomy or expressive liberty, which in the context of debates about schooling in the United States has been called the principle of the autonomy of the family (Fishkin 1997). This principle can be defined in the most pure and principled way: “consensual relations within a given family governing the development of its children should not be coercively interfered with” (Fishkin 1997, 152). The political scientist James Fishkin—whose concern in his seminal essay “Liberty Versus Equal Opportunity” is to examine the inherent tensions between ideals such as family autonomy, justice, and equal life chances—defines the principle of family autonomy in a somewhat more qualified way. He adds to

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the above definition a rather open-textured hedge or potentially broad exception: “except to ensure for the children the essential prerequisites for adult participation in society.” He then goes on to offer a characterization of “essential prerequisites,” which he defines as “the physical and psychological health of the child and his or her knowledge of those social conventions necessary for participation in adult society. Literacy, the routines of citizenship, and other familiar elements of secondary education would count among the essential prerequisites (absence of which could justify coercive interference by the state)” (Fishkin 1997, 154, footnote 4). Notice that James Fishkin thereby anticipates and lists some of the ways in which the robust liberal expectancy favoring autonomy and expressive liberty (and its logical corollary—a willingness to tolerate the unregulated choices made by others, even when they are risky or offensive) might produce outcomes that are illiberal. Notice, too, that the illiberality of any particular outcome resulting from pure and simple deference to family autonomy is assessed by appeals to one or more alternative liberal expectancies, such as equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, to ensure that “essential prerequisites” (however thickly or thinly those are construed) are satisfied. It is not a liberal outcome if exclusive deference to a principle of autonomy results in the neglect of children. The main point is that any liberal expectancy can be exaggerated until it becomes illiberal by bumping up against other liberal expectancies. As another case in point, consider the following argument in favor of equal opportunity, as discussed by the sociologist Christopher Jencks in a report on American education: “Most educators and laymen evidently feel that an individual’s genes are his, and that they entitle him to whatever advantage he can get from them. . . . For a thoroughgoing egalitarian, however, inequality that derives from biology ought to be as repulsive as inequality that derives from early socialization” (as quoted and recounted by Pojman and Westmoreland 1997, 5). In this example, it is not hard to see how a pure and single-mindedly principled (and hence hyperbolic) liberal expectancy favoring equal life prospects might produce outcomes that are illiberal—for example, statemandated genetic engineering to ensure genetic equality in all offspring; or a policy for evaluating qualifications or accomplishments that penalizes some individuals or groups for having “good genes” and gives extra credits to other individuals or groups for having “bad genes”—all under the banner of “equal opportunity.” Here again the illiberality of the outcome is assessed by appeals to one or more alternative liberal expectancies, such as merit-based justice or nondiscrimination (that is, giving individuals and groups their due regardless of their birthright) and expressive liberty (that is, noninterference with individual and group endeavors).

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Other Examples: One Liberal Desire or Another, and Its Discontent Concrete examples can be very helpful in identifying varieties of liberal expectations and the ways that they conflict. Two examples follow.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Favor Integration, However . . . In his New York Times Book Review essay titled “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” Samuel G. Freedman adduces a 1959 quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I favor integration on buses and in all areas of public accommodation and travel. I am for equality. However, I think integration in our public schools is different. In that setting, you are dealing with one of the most important assets of an individual—the mind. White people view black people as inferior. A large percentage of them have a very low opinion of our race. People with such a low view of the black race cannot be given free rein and put in charge of the intellectual care and development of our boys and girls” (2004). In this fascinating (and perhaps superficially controversial) remark, which was directed at friends who were black teachers of black students in black schools in the American South, Martin Luther King, Jr. is obviously not endorsing state-mandated segregation of public schools. Rather he is suggesting that state-mandated integration is not necessarily the same as actual nondiscrimination or equal opportunity (two liberal expectancies that Martin Luther King, Jr. seems to believe will not be achieved in racially integrated schools in the South). Indeed, he seems to imply that the exercise of autonomy or expressive liberty by the black community in the service of benevolent safekeeping for black children might reasonably result in a preference for other types of school experiments (perhaps school experiments that promote genuine equality of life prospects even if they eschew any particular interest in the racial integration of the student body or the teaching staff). I understand him to be suggesting that if you are an undervalued minority group and if equal regard is your goal, then it may be better to take charge of your own fate and educate your own children by means of some voluntary (not mandated) and genuine (not phony) version of “separate but equal.” I understand him to be raising a fundamental question about equal opportunity and preparation for life in American society: whether existing stable in-groups or factions based on likeness (and hence trust) and ready-made and durable feelings of identification and benevolence provide the most effective settings for the acquisition of socially valued knowledge and skills. As noted earlier in chapter 2 of this volume, the legal scholar Martha

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Minow observes, “During the more than fifty years since Brown v. Board of Education, integration across race, gender, disability, and religion has declined as either a constitutional requirement or a political commitment, but equal opportunity for each individual has become firmly entrenched, especially in education, as a symbol of community and national commitment.” In the light of Martha Minow’s consequential analysis of the legal evolution in the United States of the ideal of equal opportunity (with special attention to its separation from the model of the racially integrated school), and in the light of the view recently articulated by our current Supreme Court (in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 2007) that racial balancing in the classroom is not a compelling state interest, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comment to his African American friends in 1959 seems nothing less than visionary.

Hannah Arendt: I Favor Political Equality, But . . . The lack of any inherent harmony among liberal expectancies is also apparent in political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s deeply controversial reaction to the very same issue: the use of government power to force parents (black or white) in southern states to send their children to racially integrated schools. At the time in the 1950s, Hannah Arendt’s views on this issue shocked even some of her admirers; they viewed her as falling on the wrong side of both history and the political conflicts of the 1950s, as well as opposed to social progress. In her essay, “Reflections on Little Rock,” one knows that Hannah Arendt (like Martin Luther King, Jr.), in expressing her hesitations about the project of forced integration of the public schools, of course does not endorse the use of the state and police power to mandate racial segregation (Arendt 1958). Indeed, she embraces the view that the central principle of the political realm in a liberal democratic society such as the United States is the principle of equality. But she is also quite troubled by the use of government power to interfere with what she views as the private or intimate social endeavors of individuals and groups (for example, how to educate your children and where and with whom to send your children to school). In the light of Martha Minow’s discussion (chapter 2, this volume) of the decline over the past fifty years of the integration of groups as a constitutional requirement or as a political goal (and in the light of the Supreme Court opinion in which state actions based on racial classifications are sharply circumscribed and a distinction is drawn between state actions and private choices), it is instructive to reconsider Hannah Arendt’s arguments and reflect on her hesitations. History is now moving in a direction that seems more favorable to her position. With regard to the political system in the United States, Hannah Arendt writes, “In contradistinction to the classical principles of the European na-

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tion-state that power, like sovereignty, is indivisible, the power structure of this country rests on the principle of division of power and on the conviction that the body politic as a whole is strengthened by the division of power” (Arendt 1958, 240). She notes that in the liberal tradition there is a “long and honorable history of deep distrust of power in any form” (Arendt 1958, 241), and she points out that “the Constitution [of the United States] is silent on education and that legally as well as traditionally, public education lies in the domain of state [not federal] legislation” (Arendt 1958, 241). She even suggests that it would be unwise for the federal government to “use its financial support as a means of whipping the states into agreement with positions they would otherwise be slow or altogether unwilling to accept” (Arendt 1958, 241). To fully comprehend Hannah Arendt’s reactions to the idea of forcing the integration of de facto segregated schools, and to interpret them as an example of conflict between genuinely liberal ideals, it is essential to recognize her abiding anxiety about the coercive consequences and totalitarian implications of the overextension of the logic of political equality in a liberal democracy. She is especially concerned, as a theorist of liberal society, to distinguish the political realm from other realms, such as the realm of social life (where “birds of a feather” might freely flock together) and the realm of private life (including the realm of kinship, family, home, and personal preference). She believes that it is crucial that these realms of life are separate and properly balanced in order to maintain the liberal character of a nation. Expressing a strong commitment to the liberal expectancy of family autonomy or expressive liberty, at least in certain key domains of society (including education and schooling), she worries about expanding the reach and application of the political principle of equality such that the domain of the political is enlarged and encompasses everything else (social life, family life, and school life). Indeed she is so highly alert to that danger that she reacts to the imposition of certain types of equality (equality of life prospects, for example) by the state as an early warning sign of tyranny or totalitarianism. There are many aspects of life (associational contacts, marriage, who eats with whom, who lives with whom, who gets invited to your wedding, and the types of careers or occupations that are valued by members of your kinship group) for which she believes the idea of equal opportunity simply does not and should not apply. Thus, she writes, “For equality not only has its origin in the body politic: its validity is clearly restricted to the political realm. Under modern conditions, this equality has its most important embodiment in the right to vote, according to which the judgment and opinion of the most exalted citizen are on a par with the judgment and opinion of the hardly literate. Eligibility, the right to be voted into office, is also an inalienable right of every citizen” (Arendt 1958, 237). (Presumably, in line with the ideal of political equality,

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she would also include equal protection before the law as an inalienable right of every citizen.) But Hannah Arendt goes on to write the following (in terms that infuriated some of her readers): “What equality is to the body politic—its innermost principle—discrimination is to society” (Arendt 1958, 237). By using the term discrimination, she means “like attracting like” at the level of groups (ethnic groups, professional groups, income groups, religious groups, or racial groups), where one is attentive to “the differences by which people belong to certain groups whose very identifiability demands that they discriminate against other groups in the same domain” (Arendt 1958, 237–8). In other words, her liberal expectation is that, in a truly liberal nation (such as the United States), one should be at liberty to discriminate in the nonpolitical (social and private) aspects of one’s life. That expectation essentially amounts to the following: the observation that social and cultural groups exist everywhere; the claim that the very existence of such in-groups implies that there must be discrimination or selection between in-groups and out-groups (that is, the freedom to associate implies the freedom to not associate); and the descriptive and normative judgment that it is an essential prerequisite for the flourishing of human beings that individuals have attachments to in-groups of some kind. By the lights of this line of reasoning (and recall that Hannah Arendt was a political philosopher who was profoundly aware of, and involved in, modern Jewish history, including the horrors of being a member of a loathed minority group in Nazi Germany), you should not have to liberate yourself of your group identity in order to be treated as a human being or a citizen; nor does one become fully human by transcending or abandoning one’s cultural ancestry or communal inheritance. She rejected the idea that to be a fully realized human being one must be a cosmopolite or tradition-free individual, one who is equally at home everywhere (or nowhere) or lives in a world of strangers under the protection of the state. In other words, although Hannah Arendt’s “Reflections on Little Rock” may seem shocking to some liberal readers, it is important to recognize that she is speaking as a political liberal (and a Jew) who is not only fully committed to the idea of equality in the political realm, but who is also keen to distinguish the political from the nonpolitical spheres of society. And she believes that one of the implications of the liberal ideal of autonomy or expressive liberty is the idea that in the nonpolitical spheres of society one should retain the right to be selective (the right to not be required to fairly consider all claims when, for example, one gets married, has a dinner party, or decides who your children should have as friends), to not treat everyone equally, and to be free to associate or not associate with others as a matter of right. Quite tellingly, with regard to the institution and practice of schooling, she writes, “For the child himself, school is the first place away from home where he establishes contact with the public world that sur-

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rounds him and his family. This public world is not political but social” (Arendt 1958, 242). Whether Hannah Arendt is right in her description of schools in the United States as an extrafamilial but nonpolitical public sphere is, of course, a highly contestable issue. I take her to be saying that a school is and ought to be a sphere that is intermediate between the family and the polis or agora. Pure and single-minded “civic republicans” (for example, defenders of the institution of the “School of the Republic” in France, as described by John Bowen in chapter 7 of this volume) would surely disagree and argue that all extrafamilial experiences of children with the public world should be controlled by the ideals of political citizenship and political equality; civic republicans thus strongly (even coercively) discourage the expression of any values supportive of social discrimination, in-group versus out-group selectivity, and parochial group identity below the level of the entire nation-state. For civic republicans, the identity of being a “citizen” trumps all other identities. And, indeed, in some schools (those that are most self-consciously civic republican in their moral ethos) teachers may work very hard to keep children and youth from dressing differently, from acting selectively and exclusively, or from falling into cliques; though, except in the most tyrannically regulated of such schools, they usually fail. For civic republicans the ultimate ideal would be a universal system of public schools sharing a common curriculum, mirroring national diversity at the level of each school or classroom, and preparing students for life on a national (or even international) stage. In partial but significant contrast to that civic republican ideal, Hannah Arendt seems to believe that the child’s first experiences with the nonfamilial public realm (that is, school life) should be largely controlled by rights of free association, including the right of “birds of a feather” (that is, members of groups, including religious and ethnic groups) to “flock together” and thereby maintain their thick historical traditions and distinctive identities. She writes, “I would agree that the government has a stake in the education of my child insofar as this child is supposed to grow up into a citizen, but I would deny that the government has any right to tell me in whose company my child received its instruction. The rights of parents to decide such matters for their children until they are grown-ups are challenged only by dictatorships” (Arendt 1958, 245). Concerning the relationship of the state, the parent, and the child, she writes, “Parents’ rights over their children are legally restricted by compulsory education and nothing else. The state has the unchallengeable right to prescribe minimum requirements for future citizenship and beyond that to further and support the teaching of subjects and professions which are felt to be desirable and necessary to the nation as a whole” (Arendt 1958, 242). With regard to the right of the state to set a minimum curriculum, she remarks, “All this involves, however, only the content of the child’s education, not the con-

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text of association and social life which invariably develops out of his attendance at school; otherwise one would have to challenge the right of private schools to exist” (Arendt 1958, 242). Concerning education and the hazards of political-egalitarian (and in effect, totalitarian) overreach, she writes, “The idea that one can change the world by educating the children in the spirit of the future has been one of the hallmarks of political utopias since antiquity. The trouble with this idea has always been the same: it can succeed only if the children are really separated from their parents and brought up in state institutions, or are indoctrinated in school so that they will turn against their own parents. This is what happens in tyrannies” (Arendt 1958, 245).6 Any deeper or more extensive discussion or critique of Hannah Arendt’s views of schooling in the United States would need to say much more about the scope of legitimate government regulation of education. For example, if the government has a legitimate purpose in educating all children to become citizens, what precisely is “the minimum requirement for future citizenship”? How thick or thin is the curriculum concerning what it means to be an American citizen? Does it, or does it not, teach children to subordinate all alternative (religious, racial, ethnic, or gender) identities and in-group loyalties or attachments to the civil-republican ideal of the absolute equality (including the potential for free association) among all “citizens”? Does it ask Jewish American (or Muslim American or Amish American) children: are you first Jewish (or Muslim, or Amish), or are you first American? Or, alternatively, does it treat the very posing of that kind of question by the State (or by a public school teacher) as incompatible with the ideals of a liberal democracy? In her passionate and provocative book about multiculturalism in American high schools, the author and school reform activist Laurie Olsen reveals (perhaps unintentionally) some of the tensions between a multicultural-pluralism agenda (grounded in the liberal ideals of expressive liberty and merit-based justice, and aimed at making it possible for groups or factions to maintain their distinct cultural traditions and ethnic identities) and a multicultural-inclusion agenda (grounded in the liberal ideals of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, and aimed at eliminating all groupbased socioeconomic, occupational, and aspiration hierarchies) (Olsen 1997, 40–42). She presents a summary map, drawn by students, showing the geographical positional clustering of students on the playing fields of an urban high school in the State of California (which Laurie Olsen appropriately dubs “Madison High”). The map reveals patterns of associational preference and selection among the students (in-group and out-group “discrimination” in Hannah Arendt’s sense), with distinct and separate clusters of Chinese girls who speak Mandarin, Fijian boys, Mexican boys and girls who speak Spanish, Afghans, Vietnamese who speak English, African Americans, and—as described in student parlance—“The Americans” (those students who are Anglo American and English-speaking). Laurie Olsen is dis-

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tressed by this voluntary racial and ethnic partitioning of schoolyard space, which she associates with the perpetuation of unequal opportunity and differential life prospects. (She believes that the existence of such factions sustains group inequalities in academic performance and English-language development.) Does our concept of American citizenship education really require that we view this diversity as Laurie Olsen views it, with suspicion? Precisely why should we forcefully promote a civic-republican idea of united community in which inclusion becomes the enemy of a genuine plurality of factions or cultural interest groups and the many are melted down into the one? There are conflicting varieties of liberal hope. Recall James Madison’s admonition that “liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” One might argue (inspired by Madison’s observation) that it is the very realization of the liberal expectancy of autonomy and expressive liberty that makes cultural pluralism possible; this includes the spontaneous spatial ordering of communal diversity that emerges on the playing fields of “Madison High.” One might also argue (inspired by Hannah Arendt’s analysis) that if American liberal democracy is truly exceptional, it may be precisely because of influential currents in our liberal tradition that have historically placed limits on the extension (or the overextension) of the concept of political equality beyond the political realm; that did not privilege thick claims of citizenship over our communal, social, and private lives; and that have been reluctant to eradicate “factions” by “giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.” Hannah Arendt’s essay and Laurie Olsen’s book invite the question: What does “E Pluribus Unum” really mean or imply? The multicultural inclusionist might reply that it means “United we stand; divided we fall”; or perhaps, alternatively stated, it means that a community becomes united when the diverse currents of the many are incorporated into one mainstream. (The image of the meltdown in the “melting pot” also comes to mind.) The multicultural pluralist might reply (here borrowing a phrase from a letter by Thomas Jefferson written to a Jewish Rabbi in Savannah, Georgia) that it means “divided we stand; united we fall”; or perhaps alternatively stated, it means that a community remains united precisely because it leaves plenty of space for the many. That deeper discussion of Hannah Arendt’s view of schooling would also have to comment on her rhetorical use of the hypothetical prospect of an American challenge to the right of private schools to exist. She poses that prospect as a kind of absurd or hyperbolic extension of the concept of political equality and the civic-republican ideal. Yet there is a real history in the

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United States of actual legal challenges to the existence of private schools, in particular the famous case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters in Oregon in 1925. Such challenges are often motivated by the liberal hope that equal opportunity for all American citizens is best provided by means of public control of a common or standard educational experience for all of America’s children, and by the fear that too much family autonomy and expressive liberty for minority groups will result in intolerable group differences (for example, group differences in academic achievement or in degrees of loyalty or commitment to the English language and the American creed). Here again a conflict surfaces between liberal expectancies: an inclusion agenda, which is aimed at Americanizing, assimilating, and mainstreaming minority groups in the name of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, runs afoul of a pluralism agenda aimed at preserving cultural or subgroup diversity in the name of the autonomy and expressive liberty rights possessed by members of all groups. That 1925 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters announced the principle that, in the United States at least (unlike in the civic-republican nation of France, for example), the child belongs to the parent and not to the government. The court upheld the principle of family autonomy in the education of children. Hence a state statute (passed by referendum) that required all children in the state of Oregon to attend public schools and that prohibited private school education was judged unconstitutional. That judgment is quite consistent with Hannah Arendt’s views about autonomy and expressive liberty and the limits on the scope of the political-egalitarian ideal in a liberal democracy. A complete analysis of her stance, however, would also require that one address the question of whether, by the lights of public opinion and cultural folkways in the United States, even public schools are intuitively viewed as extensions of the private and social realms (such as the home and the neighborhood); or alternatively, whether schools are to be thought of as extensions of the state and the public political realm of equal citizenship. One suspects that in American folk consciousness, parents want their children to be at home and feel at home in school; public schools are intuitively thought to be extensions of home and neighborhood, both of which are symbols for bonds of social and cultural solidarity of one sort or another, including social class. Some American liberals (those who are civic republicans) are quite comfortable viewing the school as an extension of the state and advocating for the role of the state in liberating individuals from the influence of family and parochial in-groups (those based on culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, or race). Hannah Arendt might counter that civic republicans usually manage to send their own children to socially acceptable schools where birds of a feather flock together; perhaps they manage to do this because they live in subsocieties or neighborhoods that are relatively homogeneous from an eth-

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nic, religious, or social-class point of view, or else they elect to educate their children in a private school of their own choosing.

Wisconsin v. Yoder: A Classical Clash of Liberal Values Given the analytic focus of this essay on the varieties of liberal hope, the ways they clash, and the ways they insinuate themselves into debates between multicultural pluralists (who, for example, defend the liberty rights of individuals to preserve their cultural differences) and multicultural inclusionists (who, for example, defend the rights of individuals who are members of different groups to equal opportunity), one does wonder how Martin Luther King, Jr., Hannah Arendt, or Laurie Olsen would have voted in 1972 had they been justices in the famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205). In this case the state of Wisconsin prosecuted three Amish Mennonite parents who had defied Wisconsin’s uniform and compulsory school attendance laws by refusing to send their children to high school.7 Remember James Fishkin’s hedged definition of the liberal ideal of “family autonomy”: namely, that “consensual relations within a given family governing the development of its children should not be coercively interfered with except to ensure for the children the essential prerequisites for adult participation in society” (1997, 154, footnote 4). He goes on to define “essential prerequisites” as follows: “the physical and psychological health of the child and his or her knowledge of those social conventions necessary for participation in adult society. Literacy, the routines of citizenship, and other familiar elements of secondary education would count among the essential prerequisites” (absence of which could justify coercive interference by the state) (Fishkin 1997, 154, footnote 4). In Wisconsin v. Yoder, a case in which Amish parents asked the courts to support their family decision to keep their high school aged children home on the farm, does the multicultural pluralism agenda and its liberal expectancy of family autonomy (or expressive liberty), upon which the very existence of multicultural-plural outcomes is partly dependent, run up against or reach a limit? Is this a case in which the civic-republican ideal of equal opportunity and state intervention to liberate children from parochial in-group influences (including family influences) ought to prevail? Although the liberty or free exercise right to preserve their religious and cultural tradition was a central issue for the defendants in the case, it is worth noting that celebrating diversity was not exactly what the Amish parents had in mind. They withdrew their kids from school because they believed the expressive liberty of the Amish community was threatened by the uniform education requirements of the state of Wisconsin, and that the forced social and cultural integration of their children into the high schools of Wisconsin pro-

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vided their children with the wrong set of equal opportunities, put their kids on an undesirable and hence unacceptable level playing field, and that their girls and boys would be far better off spending their time learning the skills, values, and habits of mind associated with occupational and family life in a rural Amish community (which typically include farming, quilt and furniture making, cooking, and canning). It was the hope of these parents that their children would learn to prize manual work, physical labor, and the reading of scriptural texts over other types of human pursuits, and that their sons and daughters would ready themselves during their late adolescence for a life defining ritual of baptism. Amish baptism is a kind of religious and cultural commitment ceremony, when Amish youth have the option to either embrace the beliefs, virtues, and values of the Amish way of life—which includes a sacred commitment to a specific scriptural injunction in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans to “be not conformed to the world”—or else to exit from the Amish community. The Amish parents who were prosecuted by the state of Wisconsin viewed the process of education as rural apprenticeship and initiation into a distinctive subculture. They viewed the process of socialization as an invitation to learn and embrace the beliefs, virtues, and values of a way of life that includes the idealization of the lifestyle of the early Christian apostles and the cultivation of a palpable moral and spiritual sense of the corrupting influence of the beliefs, values, and practices of the contemporary “modern” world, including Wisconsin’s public high schools. They were completely uninterested in being up to date in the contemporary world. The prosecutor from the state of Wisconsin was not interested in celebrating diversity either. While the Amish parents wanted to celebrate their autonomy and expressive liberty as a distinctly premodern religious and cultural community, the state wished to celebrate a very different type of liberal value: the ideals of equal life prospects (or equal opportunity) and benevolent safekeeping for all children. The state of Wisconsin argued that every Amish child, just like every other individual child in Wisconsin, should be compelled to go to school beyond the eighth grade so that they would be exposed to similar developmental conditions (that is, equal life chances) preparing them for intelligent citizenship and a productive life in American society. The state argued that Amish parents, just like all other parents in Wisconsin, should not be permitted to shield their children from the offerings of a secondary-school education or to keep their children “ignorant” of the experiences of modern society. They wanted to foster conditions that would at least make it conceivable for Amish children to become cosmopolites, to become less bound by their communal ancestry, to marry outside their group, and to be included in the American mainstream.8 Although the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder resulted in a majority decision in favor of the Amish parents, the inherent tension between expressive liberty

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and other liberal expectancies (such as equal opportunity or benevolent safekeeping) were highlighted in some of the comments by the judges. Justice Byron White put it this way: “In the present case the State is not concerned with the maintenance of an educational system as an end in itself, it is rather attempting to nurture and develop the human potential of its children, whether Amish or non-Amish: to expand their knowledge, broaden their sensibilities, kindle their imagination, foster a spirit of free inquiry, and increase their human understanding and tolerance. It is possible that most Amish children will wish to continue living the rural life of their parents. . . . Others, however, may wish to become nuclear physicists, ballet dancers, computer programmers, or historians, and for these occupations formal training will be necessary.” Justice William O. Douglas, in his famous partial dissent from the opinion of the Court, combined the ideal of expressive liberty with the ideal of equal opportunity to raise questions about the consequences of excessive deference to the ideal of family autonomy; he wondered whether there really is or should be an identity of interest between parents and their children. Justice William O. Douglas was prepared to view children and parents as potential factions within a family. The required high school education would make it easier to transcend one’s family and social background. He wanted to hear more from the kids, only one of whom, Frieda Yoder, had testified about their own degree of commitment to the Amish way of life. Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his dissent the following: The parents are seeking to vindicate not only their own free exercise claims, but also those of their high school-age children. . . . If the parents in this case are allowed a religious exemption, the inevitable effect is to impose the parents’ notion of religious duty upon their children. . . . I think the children should be entitled to be heard. While the parents, absent dissent, normally speak for the entire family, the education of the child is a matter on which the child will often have decided views. He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. To do so he will have to break from the Amish tradition. It is the future of the student, not the future of the parents that is imperiled by today’s decision. If a parent keeps his child out of school beyond the grade school, then the child will be forever barred from entry into the new and amazing world of diversity that we have today.

Moved by one or more liberal expectancies, it is pretty easy to imagine a contemporary liberal feminist extending Justice White’s and Justice Douglas’s “there but for fortune go you or I” line of argument. That extended line of argument might give voice to a sense of outrage about the loss of certain opportunities for Frieda Yoder, should her Amish parents be allowed to raise her as they see fit. Namely, Frieda Yoder might well have learned to become a political activist scornful of the sex-role differentiation and domestic life

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within the Amish community, if only the state had been able to compel her parents to enroll her in a Wisconsin secondary school in the late 1960s and early 1970s.9 Yet also notice how that very sense of liberal outrage itself has the potential to produce an illiberal result. Why is this? It is precisely because the “amazing world of diversity” to which Justice William O. Douglas refers could not possibly include thick cultural diversity, if the liberal expectancy of equal life chances is privileged as an ideal. James Fishkin defines “equality of life chances” as the principle that “the prospects of children for eventual positions in the society should not vary in any systematic and significant manner with their arbitrary native characteristics [such as ethnic origin, family background, sex or race]” (1997, 152). He goes on to say, “A native characteristic will be considered arbitrary unless it predicts the development of qualifications to a high degree among children who have been subjected to equal developmental conditions” (1997, 152, footnote 3). James Fishkin’s definitions actually help us perceive the perfectly logical but rather illiberal implication of the liberal ideal of equal opportunity: namely, if there is to be full equality of life chances for all the members of a society, then there cannot be genuine cultural diversity in that society. Where there is genuine cultural diversity, the conditions of development for children (the goals, values, and pictures of the world to which they are exposed; the family life and social practices in which they routinely participate; the historical narratives, moral codes, and canonical texts that give meaning to their lives; and the skills that are possessed and promoted by their kith and kin) must be various as well. The only way to equalize all developmental conditions, so as to decide whether some “native characteristic” is arbitrary or not, is to flatten out or eradicate all cultural differences. Faced with an inherent conflict between two major liberal values—the court accepted that the Amish way of life was truly threatened by the equal educational and developmental conditions compelled by the law of Wisconsin—the ideal of equal opportunity was set aside in favor of the autonomy and expressive liberty of individuals and groups. If Amish children are forced to go to school until age sixteen, the court concluded “they must either abandon belief and be assimilated into society at large, or be forced to migrate to some other and more tolerant region.”10 Not surprisingly, given the robustness and variety of contradictory liberal expectancies in our society, this court decision remains controversial to this day.11

Liberal Hopes and Collective Memories All four of the liberal expectancies are robust, yet they differentially motivate action across different communities and groups. For example, when conflicts arise among the four expectancies, expressive liberty and merit-based justice evalua-

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tions of qualifications are privileged over equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping evaluations by some groups; while for other groups the opposite is true. Here, when I point to certain dominant stories, narratives, or themes distinctive of particular groups, I do not in any way mean to suggest an absence of internal debate among members of any ethnic, cultural, or racial group. Nor do I mean to imply the presence among members of any faction of a single or uniformly shared view of the ordering of the four values or of how conflicts among values should be resolved. Centrist and peripheral, orthodox and heterodox, dominant and subaltern beliefs and values coexist within all factions (for example, as evidenced by historical debates within the African American community over the issue of integration versus autonomy, and current debates over the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (see Minow, chapter 2, this volume). Nevertheless, different groups do have different histories of engagement with the United States as a collective experience; accordingly, they have developed somewhat different dominant or prevailing collective memories of the past (and related thoughts about the implications of the past for future public policy decisions). Such dominant or prevailing collective memories, which I refer to as “master narratives,” are the stories about the significance of some collective past that are most likely to be told in order to lend meaning and value to one’s life projects and to one’s personal identity as a member of a particular group. Most relevantly, each of these master narratives seems to produce a somewhat different weighting of various liberal ideals (and perhaps even a somewhat different interpretation of their scope and character). Looking across ethnic, racial, and cultural groups in the United States, several master narratives can be identified.

A Judeo-Christian European American Master Narrative This master narrative is really two stories. The first is the story about the journey of the Pilgrims and other Western European Protestant dissidents and risk takers in the seventeenth century. These settlers fled political and religious persecution to find salvation and liberty in a new land. The second is the story of other European immigrants during the 1870 to 1914 period (Irish, Poles, Jews, and Italians) who sought a better livelihood or experienced persecution in the Old World. Through hard work and because of the availability of the emerging public education system in the United States, they quickly assimilated into the mainstream and became part of the power elite of mainstream American society. Today, quite remarkably, for the descendents of most of these Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish European immigrants, the Pilgrims are embraced as fictive ancestors. This main narrative emphasizes the idea of a flight to the land of freedom and opportunity for those who are risk takers and who have a strong work ethic and lots of grit and faith. According to the tale,

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they then make it and are successful and prosperous in a land that has plenty to offer for all those who deserve it. Fear of tyrants and of concentrations of political power (a severing of ties with the monarchical European past) might be one of the themes in this story, which inclines to a preference for minimal government, divided sovereignty, and a limited state. However, for the later European immigrants, the public school system is highly valued because of its place in their own ancestral history as a source of assimilation and upward mobility. So this master narrative is a story about inclusion, incorporation, and upward mobility. It privileges the liberal values of expressive liberty (autonomy) and merit-based justice (nondiscrimination), but it also wants to make room for equal opportunity, especially in and through the educational realm.

An African American Master Narrative This is a story about enslavement, forced migration, and arbitrary or discriminatory exclusion from the American mainstream. It has resulted in an identity politics in which a racially defined group represents itself as an oppressed minority and takes on an identity associated with being downtrodden and mistreated. The main narrative carries with it the implication that a slavelike or castelike status for African Americans (still separate, still unequal) continues to be produced and reproduced in American society because of racist attitudes held by members of the majority group (with the result that too many members of the in-group remain poor, undereducated, lacking in skills, and live outside or on the fringes of mainstream civil society). Motivated by this narrative, African American minority-group members, in alliance with sympathetic and egalitarian members of the majority group, cooperate in developing a multicultural-inclusion agenda. This inclusion agenda is typified by affirmative-action policies in which the power of the state is marshaled to assist members of the minority group in gaining access to mainstream institutions, schools, and jobs. In the public policy arena, this narrative strongly privileges the liberal values of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping over merit-based justice evaluations of qualifications and the expressive liberty of individuals and groups. The general message in the African American narrative is that one should take a beneficent view of the concentration of federal-government power in anticipation of its use to protect the African American community (from Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, to Johnson and the Civil Rights Act, to affirmative-action programs) and to limit the autonomy of majority-group members (whose expressive liberties are viewed with some suspicion).

A Native American Master Narrative The Native American story is one about the conquest and genocidal destruction of distinctive indigenous cultures and cultural groups by the mainstream

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population. This master narrative supports an identity politics in which an ingroup defined by tribal ancestry (with an emphasis on blood quanta as the way to establish in-group membership) seeks political sovereignty and tries to revive its parochial traditions and empower itself by separating from the mainstream and excluding outsiders. In the public policy arena, this master narrative strongly privileges the liberal values of expressive liberty or autonomy (the freedom to be different is highly prized) and benevolent safekeeping (members of the minority group cooperate with the federal government to empower tribal groups as quasi-independent “nations”) over merit-based justice evaluations of qualifications (for example, preferential granting of gambling licenses to Native American “tribes”) and equal opportunity (having an equal life chance in mainstream society is not necessarily the valued goal). Here one would like to know more about the impact of this master narrative on attitudes toward federal government power—including attitudes toward affirmative-action policies aimed at creating cosmopolitan Indian elites. Is the federal government viewed as the reviled genocidal conqueror, as the breaker of treaties, as the sponsor of quasi-sovereignty, or as a dispenser of funds?

Other Master Narratives It is important to note how these last two master narratives, each linked to the historical experience and collective memory of a particular minority group, motivate actions and policies that head in quite opposite directions: inclusion (incorporation) versus separation; integration and assimilation to mainstream norms and institutions versus accommodation and a return to old and distinctive traditions; the multicultural-inclusion agenda versus the multiculturalpluralism agenda. Many other types of narratives play a part in the self-consciousness of different groups in American society. However, inside any particular group, socalled master narratives are not equally salient for everyone and may even be contested by some. Nevertheless, within-group variation in the degree of individual commitment to particular master narratives does not preclude between-group differences in the popularity of any particular narrative. For example, the most prevalent Mexican American narrative is likely to differ in crucial respects from the narrative that is most prevalent among African Americans, Native Americans, or Hmong Americans. Minority groups such as the Amish Mennonites and Satmar Hasidim may relate to the United States as a safe place to preserve their religious and cultural traditions; it would not be surprising if they thought of their migration history as a kind of pilgrimage, and thus highly prized the liberal value of expressive liberty over any concerns about equal opportunity. The two groups of special concern to Barnaby Riedel and Heather Lind-

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kvist in chapters 5 and 6 of this volume—on one hand, the mainly Arab Muslim community in the southwest suburbs of Chicago who send their children to the “Universal School” (a private Islamic school that tries to transcend ethnic differences between Muslims and forge an American Muslim identity by focusing on character education, with special attention to readily recognizable socially conservative values), and on the other hand, the Somali Muslim community in Lewiston, Maine, who send their children to an ethnically and racially self-conscious public high school— are of interest to us because of the way they have constructed their own distinctive historical narratives and made creative use of various types of liberal ideals to arrange different types of school experiences for their children.

Conclusion: Is Celebrating Diversity a Liberal Ideal? In concluding this essay, I can do little more than point to a series of questions that seem to arise out of the clash of liberal hopes and the apparent tension between the multicultural-inclusion agenda and the multicultural-pluralism agenda. For example, with regard to the issue of the proper balance of liberal expectancies that makes for a truly liberal society, one might ask: When does too great an emphasis on merit-based justice undermine benevolent safekeeping and become unfair precisely because individuals or groups were not prepared for the merit-based competition? Alternatively, when does too great an emphasis on benevolent safekeeping of the vulnerable and equal opportunity erode the liberal character of a society by subverting merit-based status allocations and destroying the freedoms that make cultural diversity possible in the first place? Or, for example, with reference to the idea of multiculturalism, what does each of the liberal values actually imply about the value of difference? The main question here is whether diversity is a value in and of itself, is a means to some other valued end, or is rather a by-product, sometimes welcomed and sometimes not, of the more fundamental values that define the liberal expectancies. It seems noteworthy that really celebrating cultural diversity is not what people seem to typically have in mind in their schoolyard fights or fights about cultural practices in general. Liberal feminists are not really interested in celebrating diversity in gender concepts or gender relations when they oppose the wearing of the head scarf. Animal-rights activists are not really interested in celebrating cultural diversity when they oppose religiously based animal sacrifice. Neither Amish parents nor state prosecutors in Wisconsin, nor Muslim parents in Bridgeview, Illinois, or Lewiston, Maine, are really interested in celebrating diversity per se. They are interested in defending what they believe to be true, good, and beautiful, which is not typically cultural diversity (although the Amish, unlike the state prosecutor from

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Wisconsin, were not interested in universalizing their view of the world either, or in converting others to their way of life).12 Nevertheless, whether one defends the inherent value of diversity per se or merely accepts diversity as the means to some valued end or as the unavoidable outcome of a commitment to some higher value (liberty, for example, or truth), several rather consequential empirical questions remain. For example, what are the prospects for diverse cultural outcomes to emerge and to be sustained in the United States if one privileges some combination of the liberal expectancies (autonomy and expressive liberty, merit-based justice, equal opportunity, and benevolent safekeeping) over another? Under what conditions does autonomy (or liberty) result in diversity of opinion, and when does it result in convergence of belief? What type of group differences emerge when material benefits and social status are based entirely on merit? Does equal opportunity work to increase cultural diversity or to reduce it? What should we do, if anything, when the type of diversity that emerges under conditions of autonomy, merit-based fairness, and equal opportunity is not egalitarian horizontal diversity but rather hierarchical vertical diversity? Which combination of liberal ideals is most conducive to the production of pluralistic diversity, to the production of hierarchical diversity, or to the production of outcomes that equalize things by making them uniform or homogeneous (here again, when and where equality must be purchased at the expense of diversity, the famous, or infamous, “melting pot” metaphor comes to mind)? Until we do more and far better empirical research addressing such questions, James Madison probably deserves not only to have the first word but also the last: “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves” (Madison 1961, 73). One does hope however that if Madison is right, and cultural difference is the inevitable by-product of expressive liberty (and thrives on some form or other of in-group and out-group discrimination), that separateness (“diversity”) does not necessarily imply inequality. It does seem likely, however, that in a liberal democracy such as our own, there will always be tensions amongst various liberal hopes. We will continue to debate the question (raised by James Madison and other founders) whether it is worse to be unequal (as contemporary egalitarians are prone to argue) or worse to be unfree (as contemporary libertarians are prone to assume). Perhaps the wisest (or at least the most hopeful) response to that potentially divisive (and forced) choice is to insist that we be allowed to continue to experiment in our schools with different kinds of balances among all four of the core ideals that make it possible for us to sustain our own liberality. Judging from the range of reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion

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that the state-mandated integration of the Seattle and Jefferson County schools systems was unconstitutional (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 2007), the experiments are likely to be many. Two New York Times op-ed responses were especially noteworthy. In one entitled “The End of Integration,” the writer David Brooks began by stating, “Nothing is sadder than the waning of the dream of integration.” He ended it by opining, “Multiply your homogeneous communities and be fulfilled. This isn’t the integrated world many of us hoped for. But maybe it’s the only one available” (June 19, 2007). The other op-ed piece, written by Juan Williams and entitled “Don’t mourn Brown v. Board of Education,” began by pointing out that “desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal education opportunity.” And it ended this way: “Dealing with racism and the bitter fruits of slavery and ‘separate but equal’ legal segregation was at the heart of the court’s brave decision 53 years ago. With Brown officially relegated to the past, the challenge for brave leaders now is to deliver on the promise of a good education for every child” (June 29, 2007). Meeting that challenge will certainly require a good deal of experimentation and also a willingness to be open to everything from charter schools where “birds of a feather flock together” to public support of the private choices of parents about how best to educate their kids. In this volume, the authors have described a few of those experiments and tried to identify and theorize some of the conflicts, tensions, and possibilities inherent in the challenge.

Notes 1.

2.

Not only are these values commonplace and fundamental in a liberal society such as our own, but they have also been the subject of a truly vast literature in political, moral, and legal theory stretching from John Locke, James Madison, and Alexis de Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Alan Gewirth, Amy Gutmann, Charles Larmore, Alistair MacIntyre, Martha Minow, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Joseph Raz, Lawrence Sager, Michael Walzer, Bernard Williams, Iris Young, and many others. It is crucial to note that it is in that sense only—of government-mandated separation or legally enforced segregation on the basis of race (or on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or gender)—that “separate but equal” is an oxymoron or a contradiction in terms. Voluntary separation based on a private choice does not necessarily imply inequality. It is both logically and empirically possible for two schools to have equal facilities, and for all their tangible factors related to education to be equal, even though one school is for Muslims and the other for Jews, one school for heterosexual youth and the other for gay and lesbian

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3.

4. 5.

6.

286

youth, or one school for black Catholic males and the other for South Asian Hindu females. The term liberal as used in this chapter is meant to describe a set of core values associated with life in a liberal democratic society such as the United States— a set of values that might be recognized as worthy by most citizens, including liberal democrats and neoconservative republicans alike. In other words, the term is not being used in any sense that would distinguish a contemporary “blue-state liberal” from a “red-state conservative.” However these so-called liberals and so-called conservatives might be distinguished by which particular liberal expectancies they tend to privilege with regard to a specific issue or topic (for example, free speech versus free labor markets). I also wish to emphasize that the domain of values, ethics, and morality viewed on a global or crosssocietal scale is broader and more encompassing than the set of liberal values identified in this chapter. For more on the domain of values, ethics, and morality on a global or cross-societal scale see, for example, work by Richard Shweder and colleagues (2003), Jon Haidt (2006), and Lene Jensen (forthcoming). Taken together, these last two expectancies—merit-based justice and equal opportunity—constitute the liberal ideal of the so-called level playing field. Undoubtedly, these four liberal expectancies presuppose various beliefs, including a this-worldly, you-only-go-one-time-around, all-births-are-geneticaccidents orientation to the issues of personal identity, physical embodiment, and the temporal scope of a moral career. There is a detailed and largely taken for granted picture of the world that offers its background support to those who embrace liberal expectations, although it is not described in any detail in this chapter. By way of partial contrast, however, I would note that there are traditions of moral and social thought—Hindu traditions in rural India, for example—where it is believed that individuals are free moral agents capable to choosing between vice and virtue, that nature is fundamentally just (in the sense of being pervasively merit based), that meritorious actions are not uniformly distributed across individuals in a population, and that “souls” are eternal and reincarnate. From which it follows, in the minds of those who hold such beliefs, that moral careers extend across lifetimes and with each rebirth you get the particular biology, family, and social location you rightly deserve. Thus, in a perfectly moral world, opportunities will not be, and should not be, the same for all persons (Shweder 1991, 2003). The political theorist Susan Okin’s well-known essay, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” (1999) is a useful measure of the great distance between Hannah Arendt’s vision of a liberal society (for Hannah Arendt, a society remains liberal precisely to the extent that there is much in life that is kept separate from the political) and the vision of some contemporary liberal theorists. Those theorists, in their eagerness to view all of social life as political, to decry all ingroup and out-group exclusions, and to restrict the family autonomy rights of members of (in the eyes of those theorists) unenlightened or illiberal groups, run the risk of doing precisely what Hannah Arendt feared: promoting totalitarian, imperial, or illiberal solutions to the challenge of factions. In her essay, Susan Okin, who is a severe critic of cultural pluralism, surprisingly equates the multicultural pluralism agenda with the granting of autonomy rights to

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7.

8.

9.

groups (rather than to individuals). Given that the emergence of cultural diversity might conceivably be a by-product of the exercise of individual rights to expressive liberty, associational freedom, and parental rights, this is a rather gratuitous equation in my view. More to the point, she also calls for the full extension of the principle of political equality to all domains of society, including the intimate or private realm of family life, and sheds no tears over the prospect that a universal enforcement of first-world liberal feminist notions or interpretations of justice, equal opportunity, and benevolent safekeeping might result in the complete eradication of factional or group differences in gender ideals and family-life practices around the world. One finds in her writing another example in which liberal expectancies become exaggerated to a point of illiberality by virtue of driving out other liberal expectancies. A parallel discussion of this case with an emphasis on its implications for interpretations of the free exercise (of religion) clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution can be found in an article by Richard A. Shweder (2003). The liberal impulse to free, liberate, or uplift colonized, subaltern, or culturalminority-group children from the grip and influence of their family, local community, or religion and to bring them into some dominant or dominating mainstream perhaps had its most eloquent and provocative formulation in the educational policies of Thomas Macaulay in India in the 1830s, during a period of expanding British East India Company influence and ultimately colonial rule. Thomas Macaulay’s liberal impulse, readily derivable from the expectancies of equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, was “to assimilate all mankind into the higher civilization of the educated Victorian.” One can summarize his educational objective by quoting one of his most vivid statements of purpose: namely, to mainstream Indian children by using British wealth, power, and influence to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (Rudolph and Rudolph 2002, 47). Substitute “Amish in ancestry” for “Indian in blood and colour,” and “mainstream American” for “educated Victorian,” and one enters the world of Wisconsin v. Yoder. The legacy of Thomas Macaulay’s educational reforms is substantial. His influence can be seen in the writings of many contemporary, highly mobile, and migratory cosmopolitan intellectuals and academics who were educated in former British colonial schools and who are forceful voices critical of communal identities. They are Thomas Macaulay’s children; they tend to value mixing or “hybridity” (the opposite of birds of a feather flocking together) and individualism. They value this not only for themselves, but also as ideals for all of humankind, including Amish children. Here, Hannah Arendt’s observations are worth repeating: sending children to schools in which they are indoctrinated to turn against their parents and attenuating the rights of parents to make decisions about what is in their child’s interests are the kinds of things done in tyrannies. While Justice William O. Douglas acknowledges that “parents, absent dissent, normally speak for the entire family,” he seems quite prepared to open the door through which the principle of political equality is extended into the domain of the family and where children might be granted voting rights equal to those of their parents on matters of importance to

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10.

11.

288

the child, which presumably would include not only school choice but also, for example, the location of the family residence and the particular religion to be practiced in the household. It seems apparent that this type of legal application of the liberal expectancy of individual autonomy (granting to children the same degree of liberty and voice as their parents) has the potential to erode family autonomy (and disrupt the process by which groups pass on their cultural traditions to the next generation), which Hannah Arendt would surely have viewed as an illiberal result. Perhaps the potential illiberality in that result has something to do with the admirable balance of liberal ideals (for example, benevolent safekeeping without external interference by the state) achieved through normal family life in most societies and made possible by granting parents (as family decision makers) greater autonomy than children. Those who advocate for parental rights as well as those who advocate for children’s rights in the United States have an obvious interest in the precise degree to which that door is kept open by our courts and in whether (or not) there exists a default position or legal presumption stating that (in most cases and under all but the most extreme circumstances) parents speak for the entire family even in the face of a child’s dissent. If the Supreme Court had ruled against the Amish parents of Wisconsin, the parents were apparently prepared to migrate with their children to Canada. Would the prosecutor, perhaps motivated by such liberal ideals as equal opportunity and benevolent safekeeping, have then asked the court to either bar them from leaving the country or remove the Amish children from their parents and place them in mainstream foster homes? At what point does the application of those liberal ideals turn illiberal or tyrannical? In Australia, the expression “Save the Children” is out of favor largely because it is associated with certain tyrannical historical attempts, motivated by certain one-sided liberal hopes, to remove Aborigine children from their families and place them in middle class Anglo-Saxon families or missionary schools. Many other controversies in liberal democratic societies are ultimately based in the inherent clash over liberal expectancies. Here one might mention the controversy that surfaced over the speech given by former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, when he suggested that aggregate group differences in occupational participation might have less to do with violations of principles of merit-based justice and the fair evaluation of qualifications, and more to do with other factors, the most decisive of which, he hypothesized, was the exercise of free and autonomous decision making by individuals and groups about how to spend one’s time and what to value. Lawrence Summers had in mind, for example, the relative underrepresentation of Catholics in investment banking, white men in professional basketball, Jews in farming and agriculture, and most especially women in the physical-science departments of elite research institutions, but he might just as well have pointed to the relative scarcity of Amish ballet dancers. As if his conjecture that gender prejudice and the unfair evaluation of qualifications were not the most powerful explanations of differential occupational participation was not provocative enough, he went on to suggest that to the extent that unequal life chances were factors in explaining gender-group differences in occupational participation, it might have something to do with genetic inheritance rather than with educational opportunity.

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12.

There are fascinating variations in the degree to which cultural groups develop a universalizing or missionary impulse and try to convert outsiders to their particular revelations or vision of what is true, good, and beautiful. There are corollary group variations in one’s willingness to embrace an attitude of “live and let live” or even “don’t ask; don’t tell.” If I were to hazard a generalization in this regard, the missionary impulse appears to motivate Christians, Muslims, and secular humanists (including human-rights activists) far more than it motivates Hindus, Jews, or Amish Mennonites. I suppose one should not be surprised that Christians, Muslims, and secular humanists have been relatively more successful than others at spreading their words beyond the in-group. Concerning the missionary impulse, see the article by Richard A. Shweder (2004).

References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. “Reflections on Little Rock.” Dissent 6: 231–46. Brown v. Board of Education. 1954. 347 U.S. 483. Bullock, Sir Allan. 1975. A Language for Life. London: H.M.S.O. Fischer, David H. 1989. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Fishkin, James S. 1997. “Liberty Versus Equal Opportunity.” In Equality: Selected Readings, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Robert Westmoreland. New York: Oxford University Press. Galston, William A. 2002. Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. “The Politics of Polarization: Education Debates in the United States.” In The Public Schools, edited by Susan Fuhrman and Marvin Lazerson. New York: Oxford University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 2000. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Haidt, Jon. 2006. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic Books. Handbook of North American Indians. 20 volumes. Washington: Smithsonian Institute. Jensen, Lene. Forthcoming. “Through Two Lenses: A Cultural-Developmental Approach to Moral Reasoning.” Developmental Review. Madison, James J. 1787/1961. Federalist 10. In The Federalist Papers, edited by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. New York: Penguin. Okin, Susan. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Olsen, Laurie. 1997. Made in America: Immigrant Students in our Public Schools. New York: The New Press. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. 2007. 557 U.S. Pierce v. Society of Sisters. 1925. 268 U.S. 510. Pojman. Louis P., and Robert. Westmoreland, editors. 1997. Equality: Selected Readings. New York: Oxford University Press. Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne H. Rudolph. 2002. “Living with Multiculturalism:

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Universalism and Particularism in an Indian Historical Context.” In Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, edited by Richard Shweder, Martha Minow and Hazel Markus. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Shweder, Richard A. 1991. Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 2003. The Moral Challenge in Cultural Migration. In American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages the New Immigration, edited by Nancy Foner. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press. ———. 2004. “George Bush and the Missionary Position.” Daedalus: Journal of the Academy of Arts and Sciences 133(Summer): 26–36. Shweder, Richard A., Martha Minow, and Hazel R. Markus. 2002. Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Shweder, Richard A., Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra, and Lawrence Park. 2003. “The Big Three of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the Big Three Explanations of Suffering.” In Why Do Men Barbecue?: Recipes for Cultural Psychology, edited by R. A. Shweder. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Wisconsin v. Yoder. 1972. 406 U.S. 205.

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Index

ability grouping, 16n5–17n8 abortion, 158 academic achievement gap, 228–9. See also underperformance academic standards, multiculturalism and, 118–9 accommodation: as exclusionary, 186–8; in Western schools, 244 acculturation, in Western schools, 244–5 achievement, soft multiculturalism and, 115–21 Acosta, R. Alexander, 169 affirmative action: in France, 209, 219, 222–3; in Texas, 209 African Americans: culturally responsive teaching for, 238; and downward social constitution, 80–81; efforts to improve schooling for, 24–27; group history of, 80; impact of stereotypes on, 82; influence on Somali Muslim youth, 171, 198n17; lack of math courses for, 232; in lower school tracks, 232–33; master narrative of, 281; models of self for, 77–78 agendas, pluralist vs. inclusionist, 263–4 Ahmed, Leila, 197n12 Alcorn, Ellen, 126n15 Allport, Gordon, 238, 249 American Indians/Native Americans: impact of stereotypes on, 82; master narrative of, 281–2; models of self for, 76–77 Americanization, 5 Amherst, Massachusetts, 102. See also multiculturalism Amish, 7–8, 276–9 Anyon, Jean, 229 Aqsa School, 137, 138

Arab-Muslim culture, French riots blamed on, 221 Arabs, post 9/11 negativity toward, 23 Arendt, Hannah, 263, 269–76, 287n9 Asian Americans: in higher school tracks, 232; models of self for, 72–76 assimilation: as curriculum goal, 244; dress as marker of, 180–81; in French schools, 209; as goal of citizenship education, 230–32; individual equality vs., 8. See also mainstreaming Au, Kathryn, 238 autonomy (expressive liberty): equality vs., 276–9; and equal regard, 265; illiberal side of, 266–7; as liberal value, 254, 255; and school experiments, 268 Badinter, Élisabeth, 211 Baldwin, James, 246 Baltimore, Maryland, 21 bandanas, 169, 178 Banks, James, 195, 237, 241 baptism, Amish, 277 Beaud, Stéphane, 215 Becker, Adeline, 187 Becoming a Multicultural School System (BAMSS) initiative, 103–5 behavior codes, in multicultural schools, 114 Bell, Derek, Jr., 48n17, 50n41 Bellah, Robert, 152 benevolent safekeeping of the vulnerable, 254, 255; and equal regard, 265; and school experiments, 268 Benn, Tansin, 186, 188 Bensoussan, Georges, 220 bilingual education, 30 Billig, Michael, 240–1

291

INDEX Bill of Rights, 65 Black Hawk Down (movie), 165 body display, Muslim students and, 186. See also modesty Böger, Klaus, 183 Boivin, J. Eugene, 192–3 Bok, Derek, 229 Bourdieu, Pierre, 84 Bowen, William, 229 Brenner, Emmanuel, 220 Breyer, Stephen, 4, 16n2 Bridgeview, Illinois, 137–8 Brooks, David, 285 Brown v. Board of Education, 4, 22, 25, 44n2, 47n13, 258 Brunerie-Kauffmann, Joëlle, 211 Bryk, Anthony, 159–60 Buffalo, New York, 21 Bullock, Sir Allen, 254 Bush, George H. W., 51n45 Bush, George W., 51n45, 120, 233 Cahiers Pédagogiques, 221 California, ethnic minority students in, 228 Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, 232 Caravelle project (France), 217–8 Carnegie, Andrew, 47n9 Castaneda v. Pickard, 49n24 Catholic schools, 5, 213 Caughey, John, 16n5 Chao, Ruth, 73 Character Counts!, 132–4 character education, 132–4; accommodation in, 156–60; of American Muslims, 147–8; Character Counts! Curriculum, 153–6; at Universal School, 151–3 charter schools, 5; as commitment to pluralism, 41; effect on public schools, 42; and equality issue, 40–43; sponsorship of, 40 Chinese Americans, 73 Chirac, Jacques, 210 citizenship education, 227–46; assimilationist (mainstream), 230–1; challenges of diversity for, 227–8; essential prerequisites in, 276; opportunities from diversity for, 228–9; requirements for, 263, 273; research related to, 238–42; and school as microculture, 242–6; and schools as reflection of society, 229, 232–3; and school segregation, 234–6;

292

and standards-based reforms, 233–4; through culturally responsive teaching, 236–8; transformative, 231–2. See also transformative citizenship education City of Ottawa v. Tinnon, 47n10 civic republicanism, 10, 272, 274–6. See also Republicanism (in France) Civil Rights Act of 1964, 168, 179 Clara Mohammed schools, 160n3 classrooms: creating equity in, 233; student identity in, 67–68 Clinton, William, 51n45 Cohen, Elizabeth, 233, 240 Cohen, Geoffrey, 83 Cohn, Ida, 21 Coleman, James E., Jr., 47n11 collective experience, master narratives of, 280–3 College Preparatory School of America, 137 colleges (in France), 214 color-blind model, 22–23, 69–70 “common school,” 9–10 communalism, 206–7 communitarian ideology, 188–89 competitiveness, multiculturalism and, 117 conflicting hopes for schools, 15 Confucian tradition, 74 contact, Allport’s theory of, 235, 238, 249 cooperative learning research, 239–40 Council on American-Islamic Relations, 137 Créteil académie, 216 “critical multiculturalism,” 103–4, 123n3 crosscutting groups, 240–2 cross-gender contact, 182 cultural collision, 164 cultural conflict, at Universal School, 145–7 cultural difference theory, 237–8 cultural identity. See identity culturally derived difference, 65; as horizontal difference, 69; and identity, 70–78 culturally responsive (relative) teaching, 236–8 cultural reproduction, 11 cultural system, school as, 242–6 culture, in French curriculum, 219 Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Lasch), 152

INDEX

Dagkas, Symeon, 186, 188 Debray, Régis, 210, 211 Declaration of Independence, 65 democracies: citizen education for, 230; and multiculturalism, 257–60; participation in, 15 democratization of French schools, 214, 215 desegregation, 25–27; and citizenship education, 234–6; dismantling of, 235; failure of, 29; limited options for, 236. See also integration Désir, Harlem, 211 Dewey, John, 232 dietary requirements, of Muslims, 191–3 disabilities, students with, 32–33 disciplinary standards, 119–20 discrimination: Arendt’s view of, 271; against ethnic minorities, 228; in France, 217; positive, 209, 222–3; separation of church and state as, 258–9 diversity: in citizenship education, 227–9; and full equality of life chances, 279; and high expectations, 85–86; and liberal democracy, 257–60; in Muslim community, 145–7; recognition and legitimacy of, 227 Dodd, Susan, 69 domestic multiculturalism, 261–63 “Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education” (Juan Williams), 285 Douglas, William O., 278, 279, 287n9 downward social constitution, 79; and African Americans, 80–81; mechanisms of, 87–88 dress codes: impact of 9/11 on, 198n21; in Lewiston schools, 175–80; religious; headgear in, 169–81; U.S. DOE guidelines for, 174 Dumont, René, 211 Duncan, Jacqueline, 74

Eisgruber, Christopher, 50n35 elitism, in France, 205, 213–5 Elliot, James, 235–36 “The End of Integration” (David Brooks), 285 Engaging Cultural Differences (Working Group), 255 English-language learners, 228 enlightenment philosophy, 65 equal access, equal respect vs., 10–11 equality: conflict of liberty and, 205; differing visions for, 23; in French life, 212; governmental enforcement of, 269–73; meaning of: See meaning of equality; Republican model of, 204–5; as respect and recognition, 8 equality-difference paradox, 5–12; defined, 5–6; in practice, 11–12 equal opportunity, 254, 255; and equal regard, 265; expressive liberty vs., 276–9; as ideal, 279; illiberal side of, 267; and public control of education, 275; and racial integration of schools, 268; and separate realms of life, 270 equal regard, 255, 264, 265 equal respect, equal access vs., 10–11 equity pedagogy, 237 “ethical Islam,” 149–51 ethical universalism, 132 ethnicity: color-blind model of, 69–70; definition of, 84–85; in French curriculum, 219; and models of self, 71–78 “ethnicity-blind” philosophy, 205 ethnic minorities: and cultural deficit thinking, 237; discrimination against, 228; transformative citizenship education for, 246 Europe, school policies in, 204. See also France European Americans: as ethnic group, 83–84; models of self for, 72–76 exclusion, in France, 205, 216–9 expectations, 85–86 expressive liberty. See autonomy The Eye of the Storm (film), 235–6

East Asian Americans, models of self for, 72–76 educational success, identity and, 64 “education debt,” 228–9 “effective” schools, 229 Eid el-Fitr (end of Ramadan), 21

face veil, 169 factions, 256, 262 family autonomy, 266–7, 275–9 Federalist 10 (James Madison), 256–7 Ferry, Jules, 213 Finkielkraut, Alain, 211, 221

curriculum: mainstream, 244; at Universal School, 147–51 curriculum intervention studies, 238–9

293

INDEX First Amendment: and equality based on religion, 34; and freedom of expression, 174 Fischer, David, 262 Fishkin, James, 266–7, 276, 279 FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), 210 Five Pillars of Islam, 140 Fontenay, Élisabeth de, 211 Fordham, Signithia, 77 France, 204–23: cultural self-segregation in schools of, 219–21; education/school inequalities in, 218–9; multiculturalism vs. Republicanism in, 206–13; social inequalities in, 216–8; system of schools in, 213–5 France, Anatole, 266 Freedman, Samuel G., 268 French Canadians, 167–8, 195 Friedman, Thomas, 117, 230 Galston, William A., 254, 265 Gauchet, Marcel, 212 Geertz, Clifford, 261 gender, equality strategies based on, 30–32 Germany, 182–3 Gerstle, Gary, 125n8, 127n17 Gibson, Margaret, 194 global multiculturalism, 261 government-enforced equality, 269–73 government neutrality, in school choice, 35 Great Britain, school policies in, 204 Green, Edith, 49n27 group salience, 241 Guiton, Gretchen, 88 Gutmann, Amy, 244 halal (permitted food), 191 Hammond, Phillip, 152 Hanafi school of thought, 161n8 haram (prohibited food), 191 hard multiculturalism, 105–15; behavior code in, 114; issues of discrimination and inequality in, 112–3; progress indicators in, 109–11; and schools as “temples of justice,” 108–9, 111; and social transformation, 111–2; and student achievement, 117–20 Harvey Milk School, 22 Hawaii, ethnic minority students in, 228 headgear: bandanas, 169, 178; hijab, 169–81; turbans, 208 Hearn, Nashala, 179–80

294

Hearn et al. v. Muskogee Public School District 020 et al. (2004), 179 Heath, Shirley, 238 Heejung Kim, 74 hierarchy, imposed status differences and, 69–70 hijab, 169–81; and dress codes, 175–80; as marker of religious identity, 169–81, 210–1; as sign of modesty, 169–73 Hispanics. See Latino Americans/Hispanics/Mexican Americans Hochman, Jere, 125n5 Holidays, religious, 21 Holland, Peter, 159–60 homogeneity, forced or unchosen segregation vs., 4 hopes for schools, 15 Horan, Deborah, 146 horizontal differences, 69 Hunter, James Davison, 158 Huntington, Samuel, 156 identity, 63–89; of African Americans, 77–78; of American Indians, 76–77; of American Muslims, 136–37; of Asian Americans, 72–75; assimilationist conception of, 231; and color-blind model, 69–70; and countering of inequalitymaintaining practices, 87–88; and culturally derived differences, 70–78; and cultures of learning, 85–86; and definitions of ethnicity and race, 84–85; and disparities in achievement, 8; ethnic, 68–69, 209 ; and ethnicity of mainstream school practices, 83–84; of family/group vs. individual, 9; of French immigrants, 219–20; and French Republicanism, 205; importance of race and ethnicity in, 68–69; and imposed status differences, 78–82; of Latino Americans, 75–76; models of self in, 71–72; of Muslims, 141, 144, 219–21; and reconciliation of difference and equality, 82–83; shared, 206; significance of, 64–65; situational factors in, 66–68; social constitution of, 65–66; superordinate, 241 identity politics. See politics of recognition “identity safe” schools, 12, 83 identity safety practices, 85 illegal immigrants, 228 immigrants: in American schools, 227; as-

INDEX similation of, 210–2; in France, 211, 216–9; illegal, 228; inclusion vs. exclusion of, 186–8, 211–2; segregation of, 41–42, 216–9; to United States, 227–28 immigration: conflicts resulting from, 10; and European school policies, 204 (See also France); and integration, 23; racial categories resulting from, 5; responses to, 21 imposed status differences, 65, 69–70 “improving” schools, 229 improvisation, 77 inclusion: discord between pluralism and, 258; as educational objective, 254; mainstreaming or, 33; pluralism vs., 263–4 independent individual model, 65–66 individual development, social group traditions and, 4 individual equality, assimilation vs., 8 individualistic ideology, communitarian ideology vs., 188–89 inequality: and French school system, 213–5; in French society, 216–9; in mainstreaming schools, 232; with standards-based reforms, 233; in United States, 228–9, 232 integration, 47n10; disagreements over, 23; in France, 209, 211–2; mandated, 259, 268–73; politics of, 29; under Republicanism, 206–7; research on, 26–27; as school reform focus, 43; of students with disabilities, 33; without accommodation, 30. See also desegregation interdependence of expectancies, 266–7 interracial contact research, 239–40 Irving, Miles, 69 Islam, 134–7; ethics of, 149–51; perceived rise of, 210–1; role of education in, 135–6; in the United States and Europe, 228; values of, 149–51 Islamic Foundation School, 137 Islamic head scarf. See hijab Islamic private schools, 134–7. See also Universal School, Chicago Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), 210 “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” (Susan Okin), 286n6 Japanese Americans: internment of, 23–24; and racism, 80 Jencks, Christopher, 267

Jewish Americans: dietary requirements of, 192; and racism, 80 John, Vera, 238 Jones, James, 77 Joseph, Rebecca, 232 Josephson Institute of Ethics, 153 Judeo-Christian European Americans, master narrative of, 280–1 “just community” school, 232 just education concept, 257 Kahan, David, 187 Kennedy, Anthony, 9, 16n2, 45n4 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 210 Khuri, Fuad, 169, 197n14 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 268, 269 Kintzler, Catherne, 211 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 70 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 232 Kozol, Jonathan, 232 Kroeber, A. L., 70 Kusow, Abdi, 196n8 kuttub (Qur’anic school), 135 Kymlicka, Will, 231 Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 87, 228–9, 238 language: diversity of, in American schools, 228; equality strategies based on, 29–30; national, 244 Lasch, Christopher, 152 Latino Americans/Hispanics/Mexican Americans, 75–76; culturally responsive teaching for, 238; lack of math courses for, 232; in lower school tracks, 232–3; models of self for, 75–76; as most segregated group, 235 Lau v. Nichols, 168 learning styles, disparities in achievement and, 8 Lee, Carol, 238 Lee, Valerie, 159–60 “left-liberal multiculturalism,” 103–4, 123n3 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 209 level playing field, 286n4 Levinson, Bradley, 169 Lewiston, Maine, public schools, 164–95; and accommodation as exclusionary, 186–8; assimilation of immigrants in, 165–8; demographics of, 167; dietary requirements in, 191–3; dress code in, 175–80; and hijab in public schools,

295

INDEX Lewiston, Maine (cont.) 174–80; and meaning of hijab, 169–74; and modesty as shared value, 180–1; physical education in, 182–8; and religious observances, 188–91; Somali Muslim liaison at, 168; student body of, 166 liberal values/expectancies, 12, 254–5, 264–85 liberal value(s)s/expectancy(-ies): celebration of diversity as, 283–5; conflict among, 255–7, 268–80; differential motivation by, 279–83; and idea of a just U.S. school system, 257–60; illiberal side of, 266–7; individualistic nature of, 264–7; Republican model vs., 205–6; Republican values vs., 12 Libération, 218–9 liberty: conflict of equality and, 205; under French law, 212–3 Lorcerie, Françoise, 221 The Lost Territories of the Republic (Emmanuel Brenner), 220–1 Lotan, Rachel, 233 Louisiana, ethnic minority students in, 228 low-income minority schools, inequalities for, 233–5 lycée system, 213–5 Macaulay, Thomas, 287n8 Madison, James, 256–7, 274, 284 madrasah (advanced Islamic school), 135–6 magnet schools, 5, 42 Maine. See Lewiston, Maine Maine Learning Results (MLR), 183 mainstreaming: for citizenship education, 230–3; cultural deficit thinking in, 237; or inclusion, 33; in multicultural inclusion agenda, 263–4. See also assimilation Mann, Horace, 47n10 Marshall, Thurgood, 258 master narratives, 280–3 McClaren, Peter, 103 McConnell, Michael, 50n35 McGowan, Rema Burns, 173 meaning of equality, 21–44; and conceptions of needed institutional reforms, 37–43; and disagreement on Brown v. Board of Education, 22–23; gender in, 30–32; as ideal and as lawful practice,

296

23; language in, 29–30; and levels of immigration, 21; race in, 24–29; religion in, 33–36; students with disability in, 32–33 merit-based justice, 254, 255, 265 meritocracy, 15 Mexican Americans. See Latino Americans/Hispanics/Mexican Americans migration, secondary, 167, 196n5, 198n17 minimal group paradigm, 240, 241 minority groups: in American schools, 228; master narratives of, 281–3. See also specific groups Minority Student Achievement Network, 125n5, 128n20 Minow, Martha, 258, 268–9 missionary impulse, 289n12 Mississippi, ethnic minority students in, 228 Mitterrand, François, 209, 210 modesty: hijab as sign of, 169–73; in physical education, 182–3; as shared value, 180–1 Mogadishu, Sudan, 165 Moll, Luis, 238 moral careers, 286n5 Mosque Foundation, 138 motivation, by liberal expectancies, 279–83 Muir, Kate, 232 multicultural inclusion agenda, 263–4, 275, 281 multiculturalism, 101–23; and academic standards, 118–9; across school system, 8; and Amherst’s BAMSS, 104–5; aspirations vs. accomplishments in, 106–15; and authority, 119–20; central tension in, 102–3; critical, 103–4; differences in interpretation of, 260–1; domestic, 261–3; educational challenge of, 262–3; global, 261; and goals of Amherst schools, 124n4; hard, 105–15; as ideological, 105–6; norms related to, 9; pluralist vs. inclusionist agendas for, 263–4; and purposes of public education, 106–15; soft, 105; and student achievement, 115–21; and subdivisions of society, 261–2; as threat to French Republicanism, 206–13; toleration of diversity as substitute for, 195; in United States, 262 multicultural nations, citizenship education in, 230–2

INDEX multicultural pluralism agenda, 263, 264, 276 multicultural textbooks/materials, 238–9 Muskogee, Oklahoma, 179–80 Muslim American Society (MAS), 138 Muslim culture, in French schools, 219–21 Muslim Education Center, 137 Muslim practices: dietary requirements, 191–3; holidays, 188–90; prayers in school, 190–1; regarding modesty, 182–8; wearing of hijab, 169–81 Muslims: master narratives of, 283; post 9/11 negativity toward, 23; Universal School established by, 136–7. See also Islam National Academy of Education, 236 national competitiveness, 8 National Front (France), 209, 210 national identity, 11, 15 national patriotism, 227 national values, diversity vs., 6 Nation of Islam, 160n3 nation-states, challenge of multiculturalism in, 262–3 Native Americans. See American Indians/Native Americans native Hawaiian students, achievement of, 238 NCLB. See No Child Left Behind Act Netherlands, school policies in, 204 New Mexico, ethnic minority students in, 228 newcomer schools, 42 9/11, 23, 165; impact on Muslim students, 179–80; impact on school dress codes, 198n21 niqab, 169. See also hijab No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), 38–39, 196n7; racial data required by, 9; in schools with large immigrant populations, 42–43; standardization imposed by, 7; and standards-based reform, 233–4 Noguera, Pedro, 229 nudity, public, 182 Oakes, Jeannie, 88, 232, 233 Okin, Susan, 286n6 Olneck, Michael, 187 Olsen, Laurie, 69, 88, 273–4 Omi, Michael, 80

Palestinian immigrants, 137–8 parental choice: as driver of reform, 38, 214; of schools, 40, 218 parental rights: interest of state vs., 272–6; and “ownership” of children, 275 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public School Dist. No. 1, 16n1, 16n2, 16n4, 44n3, 45n4, 259 Parker, Walter, 230 parochial schools: Catholic, 5, 213; establishment by French Canadians, 195; public financial support for, 35 patriotism, national, 227 Paulhus, Delroy, 74 performance gap, 228–9. See also underperformance Perrault, Gilles, 211 Perry, Theresa, 81, 86 physical education, Muslims’ issues with, 182–8 Pierce v. Society of Sisters in Oregon, 275 Plessy v. Ferguson, 24–29 Pluralism: discord between inclusion and, 258; as educational objective, 254; inclusion vs., 263–4; and politics of recognition, 39 political Islam, 211 politics of integration, 29 politics of recognition, 28, 36–37 politics of redistribution, 28–29 popular culture, 11 pork, prohibition against, 191–3 positive discrimination (France), 209, 222–3 power structure of U.S., 270 Pratt, Daniel, 75 prayer in school: for Muslims, 190–1; at Universal School, 139–40 primary schools, in France, 213, 214 principle of autonomy of the family, 266–7, 275–9 private schools, 5; challenges to existence of, 274–5; in France, 208, 213, 218; legal challenges to, 275 problem-solving study, 74 “Protestant ethic,” 136 public education, purposes of, 106–15 public nudity, 182 public schools: as extensions of home and neighborhood, 275; in France, 213–5; judicial treatment of religion in, 34

297

INDEX Punjabi Sikhs, 194 puzzle solving, 73–74 race: color-blind model of, 69–70; definition of, 84–85; equality strategies based on, 24–29 racial balancing, 4, 259, 269 racial identity, 68–69; in France, 209; of Somali Muslims, 198n19 racial inequality: and imposed status differences, 78–82; reinforced by mainstream citizenship education, 232–3 racism, in multicultural environment, 111–2 Ramadan, 21, 189–90 rational self-governance, 264–6 realms of life, separation of, 270 recognition: experiencing, 244; politics of, 28, 36–37 reconciling difference and equality, 82–83 redistribution; politics of, 28–29; of students with disabilities, 33 “Reflections on Little Rock” (Hannah Arendt), 269, 271 relational learning, 76, 77 religion: equality strategies based on, 32–36; in France, 207–8 religious diversity, 228 Religious Expression in Schools (Department of Education), 174, 179 religious headgear: in French schools, 208; hijab, 169–81; Sikh turbans, 208 religious observances: communitarian ideology vs., 188–9; holidays, 21; Muslim holidays, 188–90; prayer in school, 190–1; at Universal School, 139–40 religious schools, in France, 208, 213–14 Republicanism (in France), 204–13; of citizenship, 210; educational commitments in, 205–6; intermediate groups as threat to, 206–7; and liberty, 212–3; multiculturalism as negative model for, 211–12; and public identities, 208–9; and religion, 207–8; and “right to difference,” 209; and rise of political Islam, 210–1. See also Civic republicanism Republican values, 12. See also civic republicanism research. See Social science research resegregation of schools, 235–6 Rieff, Phillip, 152 “right to a difference,” 209

298

“right to indifference,” 211 Roberts, John, 4 Rocard, Michel, 211 Rockefeller, John D., 47n9 Roos, Peter, 165–6 Roper, Susan, 240 Rosenwald, Julius, 47n9 Rothstein-Fisch, Carrie, 76 Roy, Olivier, 146, 149 Rubin, Beth, 232–33 Rushdie, Salmon, 210 Russell Sage Foundation and Social Science Research Council Working Group on “Law and Culture,” 254–5 Sager, Lawrence, 50n35 San Diego, California, 191 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 209 Sayer, Gus, 104–5 scholarships, 5 The School and the Ethnic Challenge (Françoise Lorcerie), 221 schooling options in America, 22 school reform: contrasting frameworks in, 43; effects on equality, 37–43; in France, 205, 213–4; standards-based, 233–4; and transformative citizenship education, 236–46 Seattle, Washington, 190–1 secondary migration, 167, 196n5, 198n17 secondary schools, in France, 213 segregation: and citizenship education, 234–6; forced or unchosen, 4; in France, 216–9; in French schools, 219–21; of immigrants, 41–42, 216–9; increase in, 235–6; inequality resulting from, 42; mandated, 269 Seksig, Alain, 211–2 self, models of, 71–78; for American Indians, 76–77; for East Asian Americans, 72–76; for European Americans, 72–76; for Latino Americans, 75–76 self-actualization, 77 self-made men and women, 15 self-segregation: in European schools, 204; in French schools, 219–21; in French society, 217; in high school schoolyard, 273–4 separate but equal, voluntary vs. mandated versions of, 268, 285n2 separation of church and state: as discrimi-

INDEX nation, 258–9; free exercise of religion vs., 188–9 settlement practices, conflicts resulting from, 10 shared identity, 206 Shweder, Richard, 150, 244 single-sex education, 30, 32 Slave Code of the State of Georgia, 47n8 Slavin, Robert, 240 Smith, Howard W., 49n27 social conservatives, universal values and, 157–8 social constitution of identity, 65–66 social cycles, equality and difference as phases of, 6 social identity theory, 241 social inequality: in France, 216–9; and standards-based reform, 233–4 social justice, 106–15 social mobility, 15 social science research: on cooperative learning and interracial contact, 239–40; on crosscutting superordinate groups, 240–2; on culturally responsive teaching, 236–8; on curriculum materials and interventions, 238–9; on desegregation, 236; on minority achievement, 26 social system, school as, 242–6 societal inequality, reinforced by mainstream citizenship education, 232–3 society: political vs. nonpolitical spheres of, 271–2; schools as reflection of, 229, 232–3 Socratic tradition, 74 soft multiculturalism, 105, 115–21 Somali Muslims, 164–6; African American influence on youth, 171, 198n17; dress of, 167; effect of diaspora on, 185–6; racial identity of, 198n19. See also Lewiston, Maine, public schools special needs students, 16n5–17n8 standards-based reform, 233–4. See also No Child Left Behind Act state and local control of schools, 7 Steele, Claude, 81 stereotypes, impact of, 82 stereotype threat theory, 81–82 Stevens, John Paul, 4, 45n3 “Still Separate, Still Unequal” (Samuel G. Freedman), 268 Stolzenberg, Nomi Maya, 164 Straw, Jack, 197n13

student achievement, soft multiculturalism and, 115–21 students with disabilities, equality for, 32–33 Suárez-Orozco, Carola, 165–6 Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo, 165–6 subdivision of society, 261–2 subgroup identity, 11 Summers, Lawrence, 288n11 Sunni Muslims, 168 superordinate groups, 240–2 Sutton, Margaret, 169 Sweden, school policies in, 204 Tajfel, Henri, 240–1 Tarbiyah Project, 147–8 Taylor, Charles, 135 teams, 8 “temples of justice,” schools as, 108–9, 111 Texas: affirmative action in, 209; ethnic minority students in, 228 They Learn What They Live (Helen Trager and Marian Yarrow), 239 “thick” perspective of schooling, 153 “thin” perspective of schooling, 153 Thomas, Clarence, 48n14, 259 Thomas, Lawrence, 79 toleration of diversity: in France, 207; as substitute for multiculturalism, 195 Touraine, Alain, 211 tracking, 87–88; in French schools, 215; inequality perpetuated by, 232–3; in U.S. schools, 232 Trager, Helen, 239 “transformation” of whole child, 153 transformative citizenship education, 227; culturally responsive teaching for, 236–8; and resegregation of schools, 235–6; and school reform, 236–46; and superordinate/crosscutting groups, 240–2; value of, 231–2 turbans, 208 ultraconservative Muslims, 169 Ummah, 145 underperformance, 87; and culturally responsive pedagogy, 238; of French immigrants, 217; and tracking, 232–3 universalistic norms, diversity vs., 6 universalizing impulse, 289n12

299

INDEX Universal School, Chicago; Character Counts! curriculum at, 153–6; character education at, 133–4, 151–3, 156–60; class schedule at, 142–3; history of, 137–8; and intra-Muslim diversity, 145–51; Islamic environment at, 141, 145; typical activities at, 139–40 universal values, social conservatives and, 157–8 U.S. Constitution, 46n8 values: in cultural deficit thinking, 237; of Islam, 149–51; liberal (See liberal values/expectancies); national, 6; Republican, 12; universal, 157–8 veiling. See Hijab

300

vertical differences, 69 voluntary racial desegregation plans, 4 vouchers, 5, 35–36 Wahhabi Muslims, 169 Walzer, Michael, 135 White, Byron, 278 Will, George, 52n55 Williams, Juan, 285 Winant, Howard, 80 Wisconsin v. Yoder, 276–9 The World is Flat (Friedman), 117 World War II, 23–24 Yarrow, Marian, 239 Yoder, Frieda, 278–9