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1 Some Problems of Identity and Education: A Comparative Examination of Multicultural Education Author(s): Nigel Grant Source: Comparative Education, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: Accessed: 18/02/ :19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Education.

2 Comparative Education Volume 33 No pp CARFAX Some Problems of Identity and Education: a comparative examination of multicultural education NIGEL GRANT ABSTRACT This article considers the education of minorities and offers the concept of markers of identity; currently the most notable are nationality and citizenship but these may change, particularly during periods of crisis. Cultures can use minimal markers. Individuals may switch cultures and adopt conspicuous characteristics as a symbol, but culture switching may be incomplete and many are intermediates or have multiple identity. A plural society can be an opportunity rather than a problem for the majority as well as minority groups. If majority populations are to be members of an international community they have to learn how to relate to other cultures. An education system will reflect the norms of the host society and minorities need to learn the language and mores; the harder question is the degree of adaptation required and the compatibility of their own culture. Policies range from assimilation, through limited assimilation and pseudo-pluralism to pluralism. There has been some shift to pluralism but much work remains to be done. This article seeks to consider issues concerning the education of minorities, in Europe and elsewhere, by examining the vexed question of the nature of identity. It offers the concept of markers of identity-nationality, citizenship, religion, tribe, language, culture and other important characteristics from the cluster with which to interrogate these issues. Individuals have many markers, primary and secondary. Markers change their prominence with surroundings and circumstance; the primary marker at present tends to be nationality, but others come to the fore from time to time (such as allegiance or religion), given that all individuals have a multiple identity. This article considers minorities in Europe, both indigenous and adventitious and some of the difficulties of the criteria (such as language and religion) that are used to define them. The article explores the notion of culture and the various ways it influences curriculum and school organisation, particularly those situations when differences in the relative prestige of cultures lead to domination and the imposition of control. It is argued that cultural contact influences the prominence of particular markers and may lead to culture shifting, marker selection or cultural intermediacy. Multicultural education and policy usually tend to concentrate on specific problems, such as racism or linguistic development, rather than on the wider questions of which they form a part. It is argued here that multiculturalism and pluralism are not just matters for minorities, but for everyone, particularly when in Europe and elsewhere majorities are themselves minorities overall and are increasingly in contact. The issue of power also cannot be neglected, as this Correspondence Scotland, UK. to: Nigel Grant, Department of Education Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, /97/ Carfax Publishing Ltd

3 10 N. Grant is frequently linked with education and identity. It is argued that comparative education has an important role to play in relation to these international issues in helping to determine the basic principles which need to be agreed in order to guide what is deemed to be acceptable in education and law. Minorities in Europe As the European Union (EU) tries hesitantly to move towards a fuller 'European identity' (Budd, 1987, passim), the realisation is growing that it has a large number of minorities, without it being clear what these are. As a glance at a passport will show, it has accepted that Europe has many languages, though there have been some controversies over the extent of use. There is an extremely widespread use of English and, to an extent, French; a colleague remarked recently that everyone would soon have a second language, except the English. Linguistically, European pluralism appears to embrace those two languages, plus German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek and, up to a point, Irish [1]. However, the EU recognises that there are other languages in use as well. Some languages, such as Italian and Swiss German, are widely spoken in dialectal form, but are used officially, taught and broadcast, only in the standard form. However, others are sufficiently distinctive to be considered separate languages, some of which pale into the 'standard' language. They are known officially as the 'lesser used languages', which appears to mean that they are minority languages without being used by any state (Corner, 1984, ch. 1). They include Catalan, Galician, Basque, Breton, Occitan, Corsican, Welsh, Gaelic, Frisian, Sorbian, Friulan, Ladin, Slovene, Letzeburgesch, Saami and several others, but not Plattdeutsch, Neapolitan, Sicilian or the Scots language. Their sizes and conditions and relationships to other languages are extremely varied, with from over 6 million for Catalan speakers to just over 65,000 for Gaelic speakers and fewer for others. Catalan is strong in education and government, in literature and scholarship and in conversation and is used widely on television and in advertising, while Gaelic is extremely limited in its range of use (apart from literature and conversation), as are some others. Catalan is easily learned by the French and Spanish, Friulan and Corsican by Italians, Scots by English speakers and Letzebuirgesch by Germans; however, Basque, Gaelic and Welsh are far less easily accessible. The total number of speakers of the 'lesser spoken languages' may be something like a total of 45 million in the EU. However, in Europe the picture on minorities is untidy and discouraging. Scandinavia seems quite active, but there is little action in Germany and even less in France, where the problems are obvious enough. In Italy, the common view appears to be that 'racism does not exist', even at a multicultural conference [2]. There is little activity in The Netherlands, a little in the UK and very little in Spain. There, the policy on education relates almost entirely to the indigenous minorities, not to anyone else and in the UK, few if any education authorities address the whole issue consistently across the whole curriculum on cultural pluralism-language, race, religion, history, literature, mathematics, science and school organisation. Although there are courses in comparative education and multicultural education, in European studies and in anti-racism the tendency is to keep them separate [3]. Education for pluralism needs both, but there is little evidence that national governments or the EU have done much more than address particular issues rather than the whole question. The Bureau of Lesser-Used Languages is often seen as an extra. Anti-racist

4 Some Problems of Identity and Education 11 initiatives are also often seen as extras, a 'bolt-on' part that can then be put to one side. ERASMUS has been set up to try to develop a 'European curriculum' [4], but the non-european populations also have their needs in education as in much else. The needs in education go far beyond the 'lesser spoken languages', as there are now Asian, West Indian, Arab, African, Chinese and other 'immigrant' minorities in Europe, all with their own identities, linguistic, national, religious and even tribal and many of them are for example, French, German, British (and English, Welsh or Scots), Danish and Swedish as well. In this sense, the majorities are also now minorities within Europe. Thus, education for pluralism is not just a matter for the Scots and Catalans, the Basques and the Welsh, the Bretons and the Sorbs; nor can it be a matter just for the West Indians in Britain, the Turks in Germany or the Algerians in France. It is a matter for the English and French, the Germans and Italians, that is for everybody. Europe is a multicultural entity by definition. Unless we can educate children and adults to value their own cultures and those of others and sensitise them to the unavoidable pluralism that we all live in now-a fearsomely difficult task-the alternative is terrifying to contemplate. We can see some indications of it in Bosnia and Burundi. In language, there is a problem with numbers, in the EU and elsewhere. In France, the figures for speakers of Breton, Catalan, Basque, Occitan, Corsican and, of course, German and Dutch, are all estimates, usually those of the promoters of the various languages and may well be subjective, for there are no official figures at all (Serant, 1965). But even when census figures do exist, as in the UK, there are other problems. In Scotland, in 1981, there were approximately 80,000 speakers of Gaelic. These figures depended entirely on self-reporting and did not ask about competence. According to the census of 1991, the figure had dropped to 65,000 in 10 years, which suggests either an unusually high mortality among the Gaels or that individuals had changed their minds or both. There were four questions on the census form: tick here if you can speak Scottish Gaelic, tick here if you can read it, tick here if you can write it and tick here if you do not know it. What is one to put if one knows some but is not fluent? Any is more than none and the responses varied enormously; similarly, many had lived in Glasgow or elsewhere in the Lowlands and had got out of practice of speaking Gaelic (though some of them still know more than the learners). This is leaving aside distortions by individuals according to their perceptions of prestige from knowing the language, either way (Census, 1981, Scotland, 1983). The same is true of Welsh. Census findings are at best rough estimates, with distortions both ways. There are no figures for the Scots language at all. The same kind of problem used to arise with the Census of the Soviet Union (see, for example, the All-Union Census of 1979 in the USSR, 1980; Grant, 1983, pp ). People were asked what their nationality was, what was their mother tongue and whether they were fluent in Russian or any other Soviet language. This, too, was entirely based on selfreporting-for nationality, mother tongue and fluency in Russian. There were no tests; there was also the opportunity for the enumerators to slant the results, as certainly must have happened in Uzbekistan, where Rashidov, the Party Secretary, was known to favour big increases in Russian fluency and obtained them to an extent that defied credibility [5]. Even the most careful census data are open to vast dangers of distortion; one does not need necessarily to suppose fraudulent intent. We cannot confine ourselves to Europe, for this is a worldwide phenomenon. Minorities are common in the East as well. In the former Soviet Union, even the independence of Russia has left dozens of minorities and some 40 million Russians live in some of the successor states, such as the Ukraine, Byelarus, Estonia, Latvia and Kazakhstan [6]. In Eastern Europe, inevitably, there are minorities in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and of course in the former

5 12 N. Grant Yugoslavia [7]. As the EU comes to consider the possible membership of some former members of the Eastern bloc, not only will the languages multiply yet further; so will the 'lesser spoken languages'. It is not just in the East that linguistic minorities complicate the situation, it is worldwide. In Canada and the USA, there are conflicts between speakers of adventitious languages, English and French in one case and English and Spanish in the other (Joy, 1972). These are long-settled immigrants and their descendants, but there are also large populations of Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Italians and others. There are also populations, some of them growing, of Crees, Chippewa, Dakota, Navajo, Hopi and dozens of other native American peoples, some of whose languages flourish but some of whose are on the verge of extinction (Laird, 1972). In South America and Mexico (and Central America), there are millions of speakers of Nahuatl (Aztec), Quechua, Tupi and Aymara and Guarani is recognised as a co-official language with Spanish in Uruguay; however there are also languages spoken by fewer than a hundred people. In Asia, there are a considerable number of peoples who have no states or who hold 'autonomous' status, genuine or otherwise, in China, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and elsewhere. There are millions of Kurds who have no state at all, having been sundered among the post-ottoman countries. They live in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus and in Turkey are not allowed even to be called 'Kurds'. Only just recently have they been permitted to keep books or cassettes and to speak their language among themselves; this was but no longer is an offence (Bulloch & Harvey, 1983). In China, there are more Mongols in the Mongol Autonomous Region than in Mongolia itself and in Tibet there are now more Chinese immigrants than Tibetans. India has minorities bigger than many sovereign states (United Nations, 1995); the main division is between the Indo-Europeans of the North and the quite unrelated Dravidians of the South, plus millions who speak the hundreds of languages and associated dialects which are not recognised as one of the 14 languages specified in the Constitution. The Indian Government decided to select Hindi as the national language in the 1950s and certainly it is spoken by more people than any other vernacular as a mother tongue (just over 30%); there was no alternative claimant. However, Hindi is still spoken by a minority and being so variable is far from being universally comprehensible to all 'Hindi' speakers (Census of India, 1992). There is also a problem with speakers of other languages. The Tamils and other Dravidians object, of course, but many of the other Indo-European speakers also object to the primacy of Hindi; the Bengalis and the Gujaratis do not accept that the languages of Tagore and Gandhi should be devalued to exalt Hindi [8]. English is still used as an 'unofficial' official language for the time being, but only an educated minority speak it. India is and remains a country of minorities. The situation in Africa is even more complex (Dakin et al., 1968; Alexandre, 1972). In sub-saharan Africa, nearly all the countries are still emerging from colonial rule, but all of them are made up of minorities, as the grab for Africa in the nineteenth century took no account of demographic realities when establishing the colonies or protectorates. There was only exceptionally an available African vernacular to replace English, French or Portuguese as a national medium (except in Tanzania and Burundi), let alone one for international use; consequently, the former imperial language remained in use, because of its neutrality and international currency. In Nigeria, where there are over a hundred vernaculars, approximately half the population speak either Ibo or Yoruba in the South or Hausa in the North and the rest speak something else. Some of the vernaculars can be used for education, but the official language (and the language of higher education) is English. French and Portuguese survived into the post-colonial age for the same reason. Even in Tanzania, where there is no

6 Some Problems of Identity and Education 13 danger of any tribe dominating and Kiswahili has the advantage of being both tribally neutral and African, English is still widely used (Fuller, 1967). In North Africa, where French has survived in spite of the viability and greater 'political correctness' of Arabic, there are complications because of the great differences between the varieties of Arabic. There is classical Arabic, used in the Qur'dn, educated colloquial and at least one spoken variety. The last two amount to separate languages, from the Maghrib to Khuzestan in Iran. In Algeria, for example, the continuing strength of French is somewhat limited by the attempts to replace it with English for scientific work, so that it is advisable to learn both, as well as at least two kinds of Arabic [9]. Classical Arabic, of course, is the language of religion as well as culture. In Algeria, too, approximately 40% speak Tamazight of one kind or another and there are largely successful pressures to have that recognised for educational and other uses (Dahmani, 1988). There are also further complications with religious fundamentalism, which for many overrules any linguistic or even national loyalty. Back in Europe, there are other adventitious groups, immigrants who have come into Northern European countries (often recruited to do the work that the Germans, French or British were unwilling to do). In Britain, they came from Ireland and Italy in the nineteenth century, from Poland in the twentieth century and from the West Indies, China (or at least Hong Kong) and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in the mid-twentieth century. In France they came from North and West Africa, in Germany from Turkey, Southern Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia, in The Netherlands from Indonesia and the Moluccas, in Denmark and Sweden from Greenland, Turkey, China and the Middle East and so on (see Steedman, 1979). They are often known by the German term Gastarbeiter or 'guest workers', on the assumption that they would do the unpopular work and then go home. (German documents are now more inclined to call them Ausldnder or foreigners, even if they were born there, as most of them now are [10].) This development has greatly added to the multicultural composition of the countries affected and has been the reason for much racism and xenophobia, personally and politically. It has also raised problems for education in all the countries. These populations-the incomers and their children-are permanent settlers, but are having to adjust to life in France, Germany, Britain or wherever, while continuing to be themselves rather than copies of someone else. It is also relevant that the settled population are often recognisably physically different from the 'host' society and entered mainly for economic or security reasons. The essential point about the relationships between minorities and the dominant population even in the past, is that it is about power and affects many aspects of identitylinguistic, religious, national and educational self-respect. With such a proliferation of minorities-large, small, linguistic or other-there is a need to enquire into the nature of minorities and, indeed, the nature of identity, for this will need to be addressed in Europe, both at the EU level and that of member states, since the issue of minorities is likely to be a major priority for education and social policy in general. Markers of Identity Peoples' ways of defining themselves vary in time and place. We are all composites; it is perfectly feasible to be simultaneously (say) a Lewisman, a Gael, Scottish, British, European, a Free Presbyterian, a Nationalist, a primary school teacher, an ornithologist and any other role definition, as well as the partner, relation, friend and neighbour of identifiable individuals. Such a list could be prolonged almost indefinitely for any one of us, embracing all our group identifications, class and occupational memberships, all the things that define who we

7 14 N. Grant are, whether we have chosen them or not. The particular ones that we emphasise (or which others emphasise for us, correctly or not) may change according to circumstance. Our hypothetical example might well be particularly conscious of being a Lewisman on Skye, a Gael when in Glasgow, a Scot when in England, a Free Presbyterian when in Catholic company or a Nationalist at election times. These categories may be termed markers of identity (Smolicz, 1991) [11]. They may sometimes conflict, but this is not a necessary feature of multiple identity, except when the forces behind any of these markers demand complete and unconditional loyalty, as states, churches, families and parties have often done. Sorting out the order of priorities is not usually a common preoccupation with majority populations, but it does arise more often with minority groups. Nowadays, the principal markers tend to concentrate on nationality and citizenship. The two are usually held to be synonymous, as they often are, at least in the case of majorities with their own nation states. For most of the French, Danes, Italians or English the equation is quite easy, even automatic-although in the last case it is constitutionally quite incorrect. (England has not been an independent state since its union with Scotland in 1707, but the fact that it is by far the largest nation in the UK tends to obscure this [12].) Minorities within nation states (like the non-english nations of the British Isles) have a problem in this respect; their perceived nationality may well correspond to a people and to a country, but not to a state (a sovereign political entity with the symbols and often the reality of power over that country and people). The absence of statehood does not, of course, negate the existence of a nationality or there would have been no Germans or Italians until the late nineteenth century and no Kurds, Basques, Catalans, Frisians, Scots or Welsh now, but in a world of nation states, it does pose problems for stateless nations [13]. However, the singling out of nationality as the principal marker of identity is relatively recent. It is linked with the post-mediaeval rise to supremacy of the modem nation state, a long process that reached its height in Europe in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and in Asia and Africa well into the late twentieth century. (In the first case, a useful contrast could be made between the treaties which concluded Europe's major wars of the period. The Congress of Vienna (1815), which tried to create a settlement of Europe following the defeat of Napoleon, operated on the principle of 'legitimacy' not nationality and on this basis put Poles back under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule, sundered the Italians amongst the Neapolitan Bourbons, the Austrians, the House of Savoy and the Papacy, reinforced the ramshackle Habsburg Empire and even propped up the decaying Ottoman rule over most of the Balkans, thus laying the basis for the nationalist risings that convulsed Europe for the rest of the century (Marriott, 1933).) By contrast, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 tried to apply the principle of 'national self-determination', which turned many nations into states at last, but which met with huge problems in mixed areas, forcing choices which had not hitherto been required on the peoples of Silesia, Central Prussia, Transylvania, the Sub-Carpathian Ukraine, the Dobrudja, Thrace, the Vojvodina, Istria and parts of Croatia and Bosnia. In areas like Transylvania, where there are approximately 2 million Magyar Szekelyi (Hungarians) almost in the middle of Romania, there was no option but to put either Hungarians or Romanians under someone else; both have been tried. In some cases, military action (or deportation, recently called 'ethnic cleansing' [14]) overruled or pre-empted plebiscites or treaty disposals, as in the disputed territory between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1920 or the former Greek area of Western Turkey and the German minorities left in Czechoslovakia and Poland proved to be the casus belli of the Second World War. The solutions imposed after 1946 held until approximately 1990, until the break up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and the cauldron continues to seethe (Dorotich & Stephan, 1984; Avis, 1987).

8 Some Problems of Identity and Education 15 It is hardly remarkable that African states in the latter half of this century are having to go through similar traumas but in a much shorter time. Their boundaries, after all, correspond in most cases to those of the European-imposed divisions, rarely to demographic realities. Yet they are required by circumstance to create nationality from statehood, itself the inheritor of arbitrary territorial boundaries, such as The Gambia, which sticks like a finger into Senegal and where the up-river people and down-river people have far more in common with the neighbouring peoples of Senegal than they have with their Gambian 'compatriots' (Bums, 1965). In earlier times, allegiance carried more weight-this, rather than nationality, was the basis of the state. Allegiance indicated whose man you were and, hence, to a large extent who you were, language or birthplace being relatively unimportant. The Plantagenets, for example, were given to claiming suzerainty over France and Scotland, entirely on the basis of their notions of feudal superiority and exercised it whenever they had the opportunity [15]. They were perhaps more ruthless and ferocious than most, but they did not function entirely alone; the principle of legitimate allegiance was not often challenged. Indeed, it lingered on in parts of Europe, such as the Habsburg Empire, into the present century and even has some faint echoes in the UK down to our own time [16]. Rank was another determinant of identity that counted for more than nationality, however it was beginning to be defined. (Mediaeval notions of rank and allegiance were of course linked.) Bernard Shaw was making a serious historical point when he raised the matter of national identity in Saint Joan (Shaw, 1965, Scene IV.) The Earl of Warwick is represented as teasing his jingoistic chaplain, John de Stogumber, by asking him, '"Oh! You are an Englishman, are you?" The chaplain bristles, "Certainly not, my lord: I am a gentleman. Still, like your lordship, I was born in England, and it makes a difference".' One's station in society counted for far more than location; only serfs (as de Stogumber himself points out) were attached to the soil. Religion could serve as the principal marker, particularly if there was an external challenge. The claims of Pope and Caliph to exercise temporal power in Christendom or Islam were often challenged, but when the two were in conflict (as during the Crusades in the Middle East or the Spanish Reconquista), dynastic, local or personal loyalties still played a considerable part, but being a Christian or a Muslim (usually) overrode being a Frenchman or German and Arab or Turk. The same could be said of schisms between Catholic and Protestant and Sunni or Shi'a, even when these cut across the boundaries of growing national loyalties (Johnson, 1978). We are seeing something of this now in Afghanistan. There have been a few exceptions. In the early fourteenth century, what began as a standard feudal-dynastic conflict in Scotland transformed itself into something like a national liberation struggle. This national consciousness was most clearly expressed in a letter to the Pope (the Declaration of Arbroath) in 1320, some parts of which read almost like the American Declaration of Independence, with its appeal to the idea of liberty and popular sovereignty and the blunt statement that while this did not rule out allegiance it quite definitely took precedence (Ferguson, n.d.; Barrow, 1981). It seems quite reasonable to attribute this to the survival of the more 'democratic' pre-feudal Celtic polity than to an anticipation of eighteenth century political theory. Nationality as the prime marker of identity took a long time to displace allegiance, rank or faith but, once established, particularly when combined with citizenship, its roots struck deep. Attempts to assert some other factor (like an appeal to international working-class solidarity) have only occasionally been successful, as when the Soviet Union and most of the East European countries switched latterly to nationality after a period of playing it down. ('Socialist patriotism' and 'proletarian internationalism' were both held up as desirable

9 16 N. Grant values, but there could be little doubt which exercised the greater appeal (Avis, 1987).) This, of course, was never confined to the East, as can be seen from the assiduous pursuit of national interests by even the most committed 'European' adherents of the EU. Nationality may have come to be the most prominent marker, but it has rarely removed or replaced the others altogether. Within (usually) a national framework, people still define themselves by family, clan, tribe, birthplace, caste, class, religion, sect or political ideology. These are generally quite compatible with the larger identity, but in certain countries some of them, such as linguistic, tribal or religious affiliation or sometimes political ideology, may take precedence. This may be observed in many developing countries, where the 'tribe' and the state rarely coincide. The first is, in effect, the nation in most of its attributes, while the second is a fairly recent (and often quite artificial) political construct inherited from colonial rule. Political instability may shift the emphasis of identity to one or other of the other markers-particularly when, as in Africa, the nation state has rarely had time to develop as a coherent cultural entity as well as a political one (Le Page, 1964; Burns, 1965; Dakin et al., 1968). As we have seen, even the more established nation states in Europe are rarely homogeneous. In times of unrest, various markers may become banners for a dissident group, but what emerges on closer examination is that these markers are often convenient labels, selected (not necessarily consciously, however) from a much more complex set of characteristics of the group or community. (In Northern Ireland, for instance, the conflicts are often represented as between Protestants and Catholics. That is one aspect of the division between the two main communities in that still troubled country, but it is only part of the picture. It has been pointed out that neither side seems interested in converting the other. 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' are accurate markers, up to a point, but they were never total (they are sometimes referred to as 'Nationalist' and 'Loyalist' instead, but this is even less precise); they are the most obvious points of difference between two populations, descended from the indigenous and settler peoples, whose conflicts have been about power, the land and its ownership, the control of patronage and identification now with different sovereign states. There are other points of contention, but the label of religion is both conspicuous and affects a wide range of activities in both communities, including a divided school system. It is the main marker, in short, of two distinctive cultures.) Culture Anthropologically, a culture embraces anything characteristic of the way of life of a particular group. Our culture is how we do things, what things we do and how we think about them. It may include 'high' culture, in the more restricted sense of the word, in the case of groups that have such a thing or even the concept-art, poetry, music, drama, dance, etc.-a highly subjective catalogue. However, there is a great deal more: it includes language, religion, folklore and myths, beliefs, values, rituals and observances, family and kinship structures, history, political structures and conventions, etiquette and patterns of interpersonal behaviour, sexual norms and practices and attitudes to them, diet and food preparation, dress, economic activity and leisure. Alan Davies put it succinctly by saying that 'Belonging to a culture means not always having to think what to do, just as belonging to a language community means not always having to think what to say' [17]. It is not just a question of numbers, but of the perceptions applied to them. Women, for example, are in a majority in all European countries, but nowhere does their status reach equality, though cultures vary enormously in the extent to which they are treated as if they

10 Some Problems of Identity and Education 17 were a minority. This will have to be explored elsewhere, but should be borne in mind for all minorities-national, linguistic, sexual, religious, political or anything else. Powerless minorities tend to be marginalised psychologically. The British and French in Africa were always a small minority, but never behaved like one psychologically; it has to do with power, regardless of number and this applies to any culture or group. The complex nature of the cluster of features that makes up a culture can be seen vividly when groups have to name themselves, that is to select one particular marker for purposes of identification (or self-identification). The French are called after a German tribe, the Italians after the peninsula, the English after another German tribe and so on. Frequently, some comparison is being made, even by someone else. Most North American 'Indian' tribes are known by names used by others; the Sioux never call themselves that, but call themselves the Lakota (or Dakota), the 'human beings' (Laird, 1972). The 'Eskimo' ('eaters of raw meat', which implies a knowledge of people who cooked theirs) actually call themselves Innuit or 'human beings'. The ability of male Kalahari 'Bushmen' to keep their penes semi-erect throughout life would hardly have seemed out of the ordinary to themselves, however impressive it must have seemed to others, but the choice of this feature as a group name (Qhwai-xkhwe) implies knowledge of peoples who were different in this (van der Post, 1962). Naming after a geographical area suggests a knowledge of alternatives, as can be seen in the names of many modem nations. Norway (Nor6veg, the North Way), The Netherlands (Nederland, the Low Country), Iceland (Island, the Island), Poland (the Polaci are literally the people of the plain) and so forth, eponymous ancestors as originators of names-like the Czechs, Hellenes, Jews, Israelis and some Scottish and Arab clans-also single out the group concerned from the others. This has not always been felt necessary, as many other peoples, such as the Innuit or the Lakota, have simply designated themselves as the norm, if the question of norms ever arose at all. Many have termed themselves as 'the people', like the Dene (Navajo) (Kluckhorn & Leighton, 1962), the Bantu and, quite possibly, the Germans (Deutsch) [18]. Geographical centrism may be used instead: the Ancient Egyptians called their country 'the Two Lands', meaning Upper and Lower Egypt, as the others did not really count and the Chinese still refer to their country as Zhongguo, 'the Middle Kingdom', the country at the centre of the earth. Alternatively, many people have named themselves 'the speakers' or 'the articulate' and their language as 'words' or 'speech'. Examples, picking almost at random, would include Slav (and the subcategories Slovak and Slovene), cognate with slovo (word), Shqiperis" (Albanian) and Euskera (Basque) both seem to mean 'clear speech', Nahuatl (Aztec) means 'pleasant sound' and Runasimi (Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire) means 'the mouth of man'. The same process may apply in reverse: Nemets (Slav for German) means 'dumb' and Hottentot (Dutch-Afrikaans for the Khoin peoples of Namibia) means 'stutterer'. (This could conceivably refer to the clicks in which the Khoin languages abound, but is much more likely to indicate the usual mixture of incomprehension and belief in one's own normality.) After all, the Greeks called everyone else f/ap/3&pol (barbaroi-barbarians) whether they were Scythian tribesmen or subjects of the Great King of Persia, even when they were fighting or massacring other Greeks, on the assumption that people who could not talk 'properly' (i.e. Greek) were only trying to talk by repeating nonsense syllables like 'bar-bar'. This attitude has lasted into modem times, with important implications for schooling policies in multicultural societies (see, for example, Laird, 1972). Naming or self-designation by the selection of one cultural marker is a fairly obvious case of the part standing for the whole, but there are others. Religious affiliation is a common marker and it has to be added that this may be labelled by a particular custom or symbol,

11 18 N. Grant whether or not this is an integral part of the faith. One of the triggers of the Indian Mutiny was the attempt by the East India Company to enforce the use of waxed cartridges on its Sepoy troops. These were believed to have been greased with cows' or pigs' fat, abhorrent to Hindus and Muslims, respectively. If the cartridges had been so greased (instead of waxed), they would indeed have violated the tenets of both faiths; the fact that this was still believed against all protestations to the contrary was an indication of the bad relations between the company and its troops (Hibbert, 1978). A somewhat different version, however, arises in the importance attached to the wearing of various covering garments by Muslim women or Sikh men. In France, the hijab (headscarf) is worn by some Muslim girls, but this is not allowed at school because it is held to violate the principle of laiciti, which is a continual controversy between some Muslim girls and their parents and the state. The hijab, the veil and the chador (the Iranian version) are not required by the Qur'in, nor are Sikh men obliged by their faith to wear turbans. They are forbidden to cut their hair or shave; tying the hair in a knot and binding it in a turban is convenient, but is not in itself obligatory (Hinnels, 1984). Technically, then, the English municipal authority which tried to ban the wearing of turbans by Sikh bus conductors and the school head who excluded a Sikh boy for the same reason (a breach of the uniform code) would have been correct to argue that the people concerned were not under a definite religious obligation [19]. However, this would have missed the point; for male Sikhs, the turban has become the effective symbol of their identity as a religious and ethnic group. The discriminating authorities may have made their bans for precisely this reason. If even the British Army, not noted for its tolerance of individuality, had no trouble with the sari or the turban, it should not have been beyond the ingenuity of transport executives, whose employees' interpretation of uniform regulations is rarely of the strictest. The school head was more frank or perhaps more ingenuous; he banned the turban and ordered the boy to have his hair cut (which would have been a religious violation) because they were the outward signs of a non-christian faith and he was trying to run a Christian school. The boy eventually won his case on appeal, after he had left school anyway. That he did so under a reinterpretation of the Race Relations Act obscures the issue, for the controversy was cultural not racial. The law forbids (however ineffectively) racial discrimination, but is silent on cultural discrimination, admittedly a more complex matter: the Act was the only one available (Barrell & Partington, 1985, chs 1 & 2). The essential point is that single cultural or religious symbols of this kind may be quite trivial compared with the way a group speaks or worships. Trivial, that is, to the outsider, but the process of what we might term 'marker selection' may make them essential symbols of identity, the outward badge of the whole cluster of cultural features that provides the context in which they have to be seen. The implications for the school go far beyond the odd court case. Culture Contact and Culture Change Cultures which are termed 'primitive' tend to come to our notice when they are in severe difficulties, affected by war, famine or other man-made or natural disasters. These cases are not accurate indications of any culture's viability. Cultures develop their own ways of dealing with their environments-many of their characteristics, indeed, are adaptations to their surroundings-however bizarre some of them may seem to the outsider and while their environments remain stable and the cultures are left to themselves, they can generally continue to cope and maintain their identity, reproducing themselves by socialising their

12 Some Problems of Identity and Education 19 younger members-hence the frequency of initiation, formal or informal, 'rites de passage' and the like. This, however, is becoming less common with the increase in culture contact and culture change. Change can happen within a society lacking any external stimulus. Without being drawn into the anthropological controversy between cultural evolutionists and cultural diffusionists (who disagree mainly on emphasis), we can accept that there have been occasions when internal developments, economic or technological, have set social change in motion. The agricultural revolution of the ancient world and the industrial revolution in the modem are cases in point; the same could be said for the technological or information revolution at the present time. Culture contact, however, is now the norm. It can be peripheral or even indirect, as when the actions of one culture alter the environment of another. (This has happened when Latin American governments allowed the clearing of large areas of rainforest for agriculture, setting in motion climatic changes which have affected areas inhabited by peoples with whom there has been little direct contact or when warfare in one place has affected the environment elsewhere, as happened in Vietnam [20].) It can be intimate, even to the point of absorption and it can occur through ex-colonial (or neo-colonial) relationships, through wider circulation of the missionaries of God and Mammon alike. Even apparently benign contact can have a distorting effect; the presence of even 'objective' observers can impose their own perceptions, however unintentionally (it now appears that Margaret Mead was sometimes told what the tribe under study thought she would find interesting (Freeman, 1984)), and intensive study can compound this effect. The Indian chief who said that the typical Navajo family consisted of one father, one mother, four children, two cousins, one aunt, one grandmother and one anthropologist may have been joking, but there was a serious point underneath [21]. Some of the contacts are less disinterested; the US-based Summer Institute of Linguistics studies the languages of the peoples of the Amazon jungle, develops scripts for them, then uses them to translate the New Testament as part of a deliberate process of Christianisation. The New Tribes Mission followed by imposing the wearing of clothes and other changes in social mores, with often devastating effects on the coherence of the culture (Lewis, 1983). There is nothing new in this; proselytising cultures have been imposing their own norms and using education to encourage this, from the earliest Christian and Muslim expansions to the present, a process that reached its zenith in the imperial expansion of the nineteenth century. Nowadays, this is accelerated with the aid of the aeroplane, the radio and the computer, with a consequent speeding up of the reduction of more cultures to a state of dependency. Physical mobility, whether we are thinking of the movement of South American Indians to the slums of Caracas or Quito or the migration of Asians to European countries, can accelerate the process; it also brings culture contact to the metropolitan as well as remote or peripheral areas. Culture contact, of whatever kind, involves the borrowing of artefacts, structures, even concepts and raises questions about assimilation, integration and resistance. Although contact often does involve the disruption or assimilation of minority cultures, the phenomena are much more complex. When cultures are in contact, some of their characteristics may take on an added significance. This can happen with dominant as well as minority cultures, as when British colonial officials took pains to emphasise formality of dress and manner that might have seemed exaggerated at home, in order to maintain social distance from the peoples they ruled. It is normally more common, however, among threatened groups, who may identify their national dress or language in this way, whether the sari or the kilt, whether as a banner

13 20 N. Grant of resistance or as a stigma. The ritual observances of the Jewish diaspora provide another example (Litvinoff, 1988). This phenomenon is sometimes more clearly recognised by dominant groups, usually by their attempts to suppress such distinguishing characteristics; this has constantly been a feature of missionary contact. Governments often do this with their own minorities, as when the British Government banned Highland dress after the 1745 Rising (19 George II, 1746, in Collie, 1948) or when the US Bureau of Indian Affairs forced Native American boys in their schools to have their hair cut (Fey & McNickle, 1970). Cultures in contact may identify a limited set of characteristics as identity markers. By contrast, individuals, deliberately or otherwise, may switch cultures and adopt a conspicuous characteristic as a demonstration of this. Something as fundamental as a personal name may be used-indeed, it is normal for a Christian or Muslim convert to assume a name more appropriate to the new faith. It may be language, whether it involves an actual drift from Gaelic or Welsh to English or, at a more elementary level, sprinkling one's conversation with phrases in (say) American. It can be shown in dress, as with the adoption of European clothing by many Africans and Asians (men in particular) or hairstyles (even to the extent of hair straightening by some women of African descent). Such a signalling of culture switching may effectively distance individuals from their original culture; it does not, however, guarantee acceptance by the other, as countless would-be assimilates have found to their cost. This process can work in reverse, as an assertion of resistance to assimilation or even a symbolic reversion to one's original culture, such as the dreadlocks of the Rastafarians or the determinedly conspicuous use of even a limited command of a minority language. This has often been observed in Belgium, where many Dutch speakers rely on French when talking in a public context and others determinedly claim not to know French, even when they do. A symbolic use of language may be found in Catalonia and elsewhere. Culture switching may not be complete; many people are cultural intermediates. One finds this in Catalonia, Scotland, Wales, South Africa, India and the republics of the former Soviet Union and many other places, where many slip between languages, identities and even values with ease. But this can work both ways. It is a common experience also of millions of detribalised Amerindians and Africans who have drifted to the towns only to find themselves at the bottom of the social and economic heap, culturally as well as financially, and alienated from their new environment as well as their old one (Harrison, 1979, pp ). Multiple identity is common and appears to be getting commoner. This is a rather different position from cultural intermediacy. Individuals, even whole groups, may operate in more than one culture, without moving totally from one to the other. This does not necessarily mean that the two (or more) are equivalent or interchangeable; cultures can have their own domains of operation, as languages have. The number of domains and their relative strengths is, of course, uneven and changeable. The culture of the home may extend into the world of work and embrace most of their social relationships as well, leaving only school and the public domain for the 'host' culture. The main point is that it is possible and common to live in two cultures (or more) without rejecting either and that the ways of doing so take different forms according to the circumstances of the cultures themselves and their individual members. A community's minority status may influence relations within it, particularly between generations and sexes. The dominant culture's values may be hard to avoid, hence the anxiety of many Asian parents in Europe about the possible effects of Western sex mores on their daughters; in some cities in the UK, this has moved some parts of the Muslim population to set up separate schools for their girls to protect their innocence. The younger

14 Some Problems of Identity and Education 21 generation may acquire knowledge and skills lacked by the older, such as handling the complexities of British bureaucracy and trading laws or indeed the English language; Asian children born in the UK often have to interpret for their parents, particularly their mothers, which puts them in a position of unusual power through their capacity to edit the information. (This can add an unusual problem to the usual ones of home-school communications [22].) An even clearer case is offered by some of the adventitious groups in Denmark. The parents rarely learn much Danish; those who deal with the public, such as Greek or Chinese restaurateurs, find that this can be done through English, which is widely present in Denmark. Their children, however, do learn Danish at school and, thus, find themselves as interpreters with Danish officialdom, which is bound to enhance their status even in traditionally authoritarian family structures (in addition to being open to the influence of the more informal mores of Danish society) [23]. As Harrison (1979) suggested the internationalisation of institutions and information adds further factors to the interplay between cultures in any society. The wider society itself is changing with the greater availability of goods, their standardisation, mobility, travel, tourism and the availability of variety in a range of activities and values from cuisine to sex. (The use of English by Greeks in Copenhagen is one illustration of this and so is the demand for Greek restaurants.) Many of these developments encourage homogenisation, but to see this as the full picture is rather too simple. McLuhan's idea of the world turning into a 'global village' as media, information and fashions are internationalised tells only part of the story (Harrison, 1979, pp ). There is also a trend to retain or revive cultural particularism, which partly a reaction to the ever-larger economic or political unit and an increasing sense of isolation from the actual sources of power or a feeling that standardisation has gone far enough. However, it can also be seen as a logical development of certain aspects of this process of internationalisation-for that (unless it takes the form of the imposition of one set of norms) implies variety, alternatives, pluralism and, thus, the opportunity to retain one's culture without being cut off from others and to develop it within an international context. Despite the assimilationist pressures, homogeneity is neither universal nor inevitable. The implications for the schools are profound. A pluralist society can thus be seen as an opportunity, rather than a problem-not only for minorities, but for the majorities also. If majority populations are to function effectively as members of an international community (and this is what most of them claim), they have to learn how to relate to other cultures in a context where even the majority cultures are in a minority position overall, as even the English, Germans, French, Italians and Spaniards are in the EU. From this point of view, minorities can be a resource rather than a problem. Multicultural issues, therefore, have profound implications for the schooling of majority as well as minority groups. The question is not whether these issues must be tackled, but how and there is already a considerable literature which examines some attempts to do this and the problems and possibilities that can arise. Some hard choices are likely to present themselves. While it is true that many societies, including our own, have made insufficient allowance for cultural diversity, it has to be recognised that the acceptance or even encouragement of such diversity will not solve all the problems of identity or values. Cultures embrace the whole way of life of their groups and it can happen that values may clash beyond the point where 'live and let live' can provide an adequate solution. The attitudes of one group on sex roles, even the value of life or the balance of rights between the individual and the family or community may conflict with the norms and even the laws of another in the same society. When this happens, we have to be ready to ask how far and by what criteria, the needs of diversity and unity can be reconciled.

15 22 N. Grant When cultures are in contact all may become aware of their own most distinctive characteristics. Dominant or majority cultures, however, may become more aware of their identity, but do not usually suffer from identity problems; after all, they can define their own way as the norm and regard others as deviant, if they are permitted at all. This, however, is changing with greater internationalisation of institutions, trade and the media. The growth of multinational constructs such as the EU and modem media and technology renders even majorities less isolable in culture and education. Dominated or minority cultures can have problems of identity affecting most aspects of their lives, including education. What they have in common is living in a society where the most conspicuous norms are those of some other culture; where they differ is in the relationship which they have with that culture, but they also are under much the same influences as the majorities. There are many variations, but they can be placed broadly into two categories: cultures and dominated from the outside and minority cultures (often immigrant or immigrant descended) within 'host' societies. Identity, Minorities and Power: implications for education The most obvious examples of cultures dominated from outside are those under some kind of colonial or imperial rule, where political power lies outside the society and is imposed. The extent to which the power to impose is actually used can vary; normally, the making and enforcement of law and the broad mechanisms of social and economic control are an irreducible minimum, but may either be direct or exercised through local intermediaries. The imposition often includes the official language, social institutions and the structure of the school system. In the former French Empire, for example, only the French language enjoyed official status and the schools were run on the same lines as those of metropolitan France, including the details of the curriculum, which were centrally prescribed in France itself. (Children, now adults, from the Comoro Islands and from Madagascar, still remember reading about 'nos aieux, les Gaulois, qui etaient des grands hommes, musculaires et hauts, avec les cheveux longs et blonds [24].) It has been argued that, given the different environment, the schools could not be functionally the same as the French models; when pupils had to compete keenly at various stages for the opportunity of continuing in schools at all, examinations were bound to have an additional importance and dominate every aspect of teaching and learning much more than in the metropolitan models. However, the structure and content are clearly French, however distorted; they certainly did not grow from the needs and conditions of the African cultures. In the former Portuguese colonies much the same approach was adopted, when they established schools at all (Farine, 1969). However, there were other ways of intruding another culture through education, such as leaving the process to missionary or church schools, an approach much favoured in the British-ruled territories in Africa. The secular authorities could also intervene directly, though this did not always mean imposing an entire system as in the case of the French territories. The addition of a system alongside indigenous institutions could have much the same effect, as when the Russian Tsarist authorities set up schools of their own type alongside the traditional Koranic schools like the Maktab or the Madrasa (which were in any case few in number) (Medlin & Cave, 1964). The British followed a similar approach in some of their territories, notably India. Before British rule, India had already had three educational systems: in Sanskrit for northern Hindus, Tamil for southern Hindus and Persian and Arabic for Muslims. All were confined to a small elite and were largely concerned with learning the sacred texts, mainly by rote. Some of the early administrators, like Warren Hastings, favoured the development of Sanskrit

16 Some Problems of Identity and Education 23 and Persian-Arabic learning, but this view did not prevail. In 1835, Thomas Macaulay recommended the creation of a fourth English-language system as being 'most useful to our native subjects' (Maxwell, 1962). We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich these dialects with terms of science borrowed from Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population [25]. There were some moves to develop vernacular teaching as well, mainly at primary level, but it was obvious that the English-language system would lead to university or jobs in government service. It is interesting to note that for all his cultural arrogance, Macaulay at least thought that the vernaculars could and should be developed. In the British Isles, schools have consistently been used by central government to root them out-in Wales after the union of 1536 and in Ireland from the Statutes of Kilkenny as early as 1366 (Bell & Grant, 1977). In Scotland, similar measures against Gaelic were first taken not by an English or British government, but by one based in lowland Scotland. Of the various measures, the 1616 Act of Privy Council of James VI makes it clear that 'the vulgar Inglishe toung be universalle plantit, and the Irish language, which is one of the cheif and principall causis of the continewance of barbaritie and incivillitie amongis the inhabitantis of the Iles and the Heylandis, may be abolisheit and removit' and schools should be used for this 'where convenient means may be had for entertayning a scoole' (Mackinnon, 1992). Strictly speaking, this example is not quite domination from the outside, since the Gaels were just as much part of the Scottish state as the lowlanders. The Gaels themselves did not see it in this way, however; nor did the Edinburgh government, as the use of 'Irish' (instead of the earlier 'Scottis') for the Gaelic language makes clear. There are countless examples of this kind of relationship, particularly since such dominance can remain even after the political link has gone. Many African countries still run school systems modelled on those of France and Britain, with French and English as the main-sometimes the only-teaching medium and although vernacular education has advanced in India since independence, English-medium instruction still dominates, particularly at the higher level. Nor need there have been a colonial relationship; hegemony can have a similar effect. Even in Stalin's time, the countries of Eastern Europe remained independent, but were strongly influenced by Soviet policy and practice (Grant, 1969, pp ), in education as in other things. The use of translations of Soviet textbooks in Hungarian and East German schools was an extreme case, but the structures and policies and the social values taught, reflected Soviet models closely, well into the post-stalin period. There was never any attempt to have Russian displace the national language, naturally, but in many countries Russian was given pride of place as the first foreign language. Nor is imposition always necessary, as is evidenced by most of the post-colonial examples. Members of a non-dominant culture may adopt educational practices as a way of 'promoting' themselves into the dominant one. Japan adopted, quite deliberately, European-style schooling at the time of the Meiji Restoration and after the Second World War continued with the German and French models, but in an American dress (Storry, 1960). Scotland, despite having its own educational system, has been open to English influence since the Reformation, as can be seen from the later penetration of lowland

17 24 N. Grant Scots by English; by the eighteenth century, elocution masters were flourishing in Edinburgh as even the pronunciation was suspect among the upwardly mobile (McClure, 1986; Kay, 1988). Indigenous minorities with their own identifiable geographical regions come most readily into the previous category; in their own terms, they are dominated from outside even within the territory of the same state, like the Bretons in France or the Saami (Lapps) in northern Scandinavia and countless others. Immigrant groups and their descendants, however, are in a different position. They may concentrate in certain areas, such as the Puerto Ricans in parts of New York. Scandinavians in parts of Minnesota or West Indians in particular areas in some English cities (Krausz, 1972). However, they are relatively dispersed, form a minority even within their own areas of concentration and live within societies with norms already determined by the majority culture. An education system will naturally reflect the norms of the host society, within which the minorities have to function and will therefore need to learn enough of the language and mores to be able to do this. For them, the question is the degree of adaptation required and the extent to which their own culture can also be retained. For the schools, the question is how far they can or should take account of cultural differences, how much variation they can accept and whether they should seek to assimilate the minorities or encourage them to retain and develop their own cultures, or something in between. Some societies, like the USA and Canada, are originally immigrant descended and this again is linked to power. Canada, for example, has substantial populations of Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and many others, but the Anglophone and Francophone dominant cultures are themselves the product of earlier immigrations. (There is the further complication that although the last two are dominant in their own areas, the Anglophone is dominant in Canada as a whole, which again reflects power. This is a factor absent in Australia or the USA, where the Anglophone culture is powerful, but is not shared (see Laird, 1972; Smolicz, 1991). Scotland has had a relatively small population of former immigrant minorities, mainly the descendants of Irish settlers from 1840 onwards, Italians from the nineteenth century, Poles during and after the Second World War and Asians in the 1950s and 1960s. There is also a significant Highland diaspora, particularly in and around Glasgow. Scotland's Gaelsa predominant linguistic group-thus come into both categories; indeed, though the highest proportions are in the Isles (where they form a majority), the greatest numbers are now found in the lowlands or other parts of the mainland where they are a minority and where their educational situation has in many respects more in common with that of Glasgow Italians or Chinese than with Lewis or Skye Gaels. One further distinction needs to be made. In some countries, such as the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK, immigrant groups and their locally-born descendants are regarded as settlers (Colpi, 1991; Maan, 1993). Policies towards them vary from assimilation to pluralism to neglect, but few (apart from the British National Party and similar racist groups) expect them to go away. This is not quite so in Western Europe where there are also substantial immigrant groups-turks, Italians, Moluccans, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese, Yugoslavs and others in the northern countries, mainly from the Middle East or Southern (and now Eastern) Europe. Officially, they are usually regarded as Gastarbeiter or 'guest workers'; paradoxically, this makes it easier to concede mother-tongue teaching and cultural maintenance in the schools, absolved from considering the implications for the majority populations [26]. In some cases, classification depends on the viewpoint of the observer. It is not enough, however, to recognise that minorities may themselves form local majorities; that is obvious

18 Some Problems of Identity and Education 25 enough-but their status may be affected by the kind of area in which they form a majority or by the kind of majority that they form elsewhere. Thus, the Gaels are a tiny majority in Scotland considered as a whole. To take the other extreme, they are a large majority in the western isles. More ambiguously, they are a majority (just) on the Isle of Skye, but not in Highland Region. Again, they form a minority in Wester Ross, a large minority (with some majority pockets) in a sparsely populated area; in urban Strathclyde, on the other hand, they are represented in much more substantial numbers, but are a tiny and dispersed minority among the population as a whole. Their position thus differs from one part of Scotland to another and each position poses rather different educational needs. The effective status of a minority, then, is not just a matter of numbers, but has much to do with power and prestige, geographical concentration, the degree of autonomy of the area and other factors such as the use of the educational system. The Catalans, for example, straddle the French-Spanish frontier. Numerically, the difference in their status within the two nation states is one of degree; in both, they are a minority within the state but a majority in their geographical area. French Catalonia is economically depressed, is a peripheral region in a centralised state and has schools run from Paris with instruction in French only. By contrast, Spanish Catalonia is one of the most prosperous parts of Spain and Catalan has an ancient and strong literary tradition. It has had internal self-government (the Generalitat de Catalunya) since shortly after Franco's death and has been developing instruction through the medium of Catalan in the schools, something that could be done only surreptitiously during the fascist period. (The position of the Basques in both France and Spain is similar to that of the Catalans, except that Basque speakers are numerically less strong, both absolutely and proportionally, the language is less developed in education and literature and the linguistic gap between Basque and the majority languages makes its acquisition by incomers much less likely (Grant & Docherty, 1993).) Historically, policies of assimilating minorities have been by far the commonest, apart from total exclusion and have been pursued by the discouragement of the norms of the minority or dominated cultures, but this has now shifted somewhat, via limited tolerance and pseudo-pluralism, in a hesitantly pluralist direction. Completely pluralist societies are still relatively rare. It has already been suggested that most long-standing examples may be attributed to necessity or historical stalemate, though in some cases, such as Switzerland, a loose federal structure may play some part too. Switzerland is effectively a federation of 26 states, autonomous in most respects. Such federal pluralism works quite well in Switzerland but locally ranges from positive support for minority cultures, as in the Canton of ZUirich, to complete neglect, as in Appenzell (see, for example, Matheson, 1992, 1995). Most recent developments in the direction of pluralism are incomplete and, indeed, one of the major concerns in the countries in question is how far the recognition of cultural variety can be reconciled with the claims of national unity and security. It is important to recognise, however, that unity can be compatible with pluralist policy, provided the unity element is not seen simply as an automatic assimilation to the majority mode, but is conceived as something valid for the community as a whole; there may be such common ground, but the essential point is that it has been identified and thought through, not merely assumed; conflicts can be expected and, while some can be anticipated, there is a need to work out in advance the principles that will have to prevail, whatever the contentions may be. As yet, this is an extremely uncommon state of affairs, as majorities still seldom think in this way. The growing internationalisation of institutions, trade and lifestyles, however, may be changing this gradually, as majorities come to realise that they too are all minorities in the supranational contexts.

19 26 N. Grant NOTES [1] At the moment, Irish is used for official notices, but not for interpretation. The Irish have Irish as an official language which does not appear on university forms, beyond the title of the institution. The Welsh, though their language is unofficial in Europe, have all university forms bilingual. [2] This was said during a seminar run by the Regione Toscana in Florence, 1991, from which came a book, La Scuola e la Societd Multiculturale: elementi di anahsi multidisciplinare (Tassinari et al., 1992). See Grant (1992, pp ). One of the speakers said, 'Non e necessario l'educazione antirazzista. In Italia, il razzismo non esiste' (Antiracist education is not necessary. In Italy, racism does not exist). This must have come as a surprise to some black people in Italy. For Scandinavia, see Paulston (1982) and Delraport (1979). [3] It is one of the ironies that some workers in the very fields that should be concerned with the international dimension are often discouraged by other workers from doing so. [4] See any ERASMUS application for funding (from Brussels) or see Budd (1987). [5] Sharaf Rashidov, the Communist Party Secretary, was well-known to favour bilingualism in Russian and Uzbek and it is virtually certain that the enumerators gave him the figures that he wanted. When he died, his remains were entombed in a mausoleum reminiscent of Lenin's or Dimitrov's, but he was removed to more modest accommodation even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. [6] The figures are based partly on Soviet returns, and partly on more recent estimates (or guesses). [7] Serbian and Croatian are very closely related, with some slight phonetic and lexical differences. The Serbs and Bosnians both speak the Serbian form. [8] The late Jawaharlal Nehru used to complain that he could not understand the Sanskritised Hindi of All-India Radio. He was not alone; his grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, often had to use several interpreters from regional Hindi to the local village Hindi during his vasectomy campaigns. The opportunities for misunderstanding were considerable. Bengali is revered as the language of the poet Rabindranath Tagore and Gujarat is the native tongue of Mohandas Gandhi. [9] Arabic is spoken in several forms, almost amounting to separate languages, one approximating to the classical, one to the educated colloquial and at least one to the regional lingua franca, which is highly differentiated from the Maghrib to Iraq. [10] See almost any issue of Bildung und Wi/3enschaft (Bonn, Inter Nationes) during the last 6 years. Their usage makes it clear that Auslinder may be born in Germany. [11] The term 'markers' is my own: Smolicz (1991) used 'overriding values', which sometimes fits the situation. [12] Very approximately, England 50 million, Scotland 5 million, Wales 3 million and Northern Ireland 1.5 million. [13] A tragic and classical example of a 'stateless nation' is Bosnia, along with Macedonia and Montenegro. The Northern Irish have something of this problem too (having links with two states), as have the Kurds (having links with at least five, none of them independently Kurdish) and many others. [14] The expression 'ethnic cleansing' is not new, but was in use in the 1930s and 1940s and not only in Germany. [15] The Plantagenets never seemed to understand that since kings in Scotland were Kings of Scots, not of Scotland, the country was not the king's to give away. Many tried to enforce this, but the most ferocious and brutal was Edward I, the 'Hammer of the Scots' who actually managed, unintentionally, to hammer the Scots into a nation. [16] There are still to be 'Anglo-Irish' meetings for meetings between the UK and the Irish Republic and we still see the habitual use of the Union Jack flag for English teams, even when playing against other UK countries. We still hear references to the 'British educational system', which does not exist. [17] Professor Alan Davies, Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, at a Seminar at the University of Edinburgh, [18] The Germans were known as Deutsch (the people), Alemanni (alle Minner or all men) and Germani, which seems cognate with 'relative' or even 'brother'. [19] Sikhs are not obliged to wear the turban, but to keep their hair uncut and wear a special kind of underpants, a bangle, a comb and a sword (usually kept to non-lethal dimensions and possibly sewn into the lining of the jacket); long hair, less formally, was the visible badge of Amerindian identity. [20] The effects on the forests and ecology of Vietnam of the spraying of defoliants are still being felt long after the war. Vietnam is not quite alone, for example Malaya experienced this too during the emergency. [21] Personal communication, Ann Arbor, Michigan, [22] Personal communications, Glasgow and London, [23] Personal observations, Copenhagen, [24] Mr Abdourahim Said Bakar, from the Comoro Islands and Dr Andriamparanizandriny Rajaonarison, from Madagascar; oral communications, Glasgow, 1991 and ('Our ancestors, the Gauls, were big men, tall and muscular, with long blond hair'.) [25] Macaulay's minute of 2 February 1835 in Sharp (1920). [26] They came largely from former colonies, except to Germany and Switzerland, where Turkey, Spain, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia supplied the need for labour. Turkey is still known as 'Germany's Bantustan'.

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