Cultural Pluralism and Educational Policy: In Search of Stable Multiculturalism

Abstract

The significance and meaning of cultural pluralism, or of multiculturalism as it is more commonly referred to in Australia, continue to excite much debate, as well as conceptual confusion. In this paper three possible types of multiculturalism in ethnically plural societies are analysed, namely those of ‘transitional‘, ‘residual’, and ‘stable’ or enduring multiculturalism. The latter orientation is carefully distinguished from separatism, while the transitional and residual types of multiculturalism are related to assimilationist solutions to pluralism.

Throughout the paper the emphasis is placed on the paramount significance of culture in social life and on the need to distinguish between viable cultures that can be transmitted and modified by future generations, and cultures that have been reduced to residues through the loss of their core values. Such a concept of ethnic cultures, each with its distinct core, is discussed within the framework of values that are supra-ethnic, or shared by all sections of Australian society. From this vantage, the role of the school appears to be that of cultivating such shared values, and of transmitting the cores of all groups, within a social matrix that is dynamic and capable of change. This type of viable and developing pluralism is only possible if it is related to the personal cultural worlds of all Australians, since plurality remains a sterile notion unless it is seen to permeate the lives of individuals from all groups in society. The focus of the paper is on Australia, but examples from other ethnically plural societies are introduced, in order to highlight those developments that bear upon the Australian scene, and to explicate certain conceptual distinctions that are best understood in an international context.